Just six months after the club was re-formed, Hornets RL are making bold plans for the future and chief operating officer Joe Pitts is confident they will come to fruition because the passion and will to succeed are already in place.

"I am very optimistic about the future," he said. "We will get better on the field and we have a three-year plan. In that time we want to be able to give the players an opportunity to play as full-time professionals. We will have been promoted from Co-operative Championship One to the Championship and we will be performing well towards the top end of that division. That will be achieved because we will have players who we have been able to offer full-time terms to. In return, those players can train full time and at Super League standard. They will have time to go out and get more involved in community activities, putting things back into the community. This will draw a different income stream into the club from different Government bodies and the more of that we do, the more players we can offer full-time contracts to."

Hornets have realised money taken through the turnstiles is not a means by which the club can exist and, during these difficult economic times, the emphasis will be on generating income by other means, as Pitts made clear.

"You cannot be dependent on the gates; you need income from a number of different areas," he insisted.

"In all probability, the four main income streams we will have in the next few years will be the club lottery, funding from Government bodies, membership and sponsorship. Anything we get on the gate on a home game is a bonus and the only way we will get that is by providing entertainment both on and off the field. Commercially, we will get better. We will learn from other clubs and we will gain experience. It’s a huge learning curve but we will get there."

The entertainment on the field will be provided by Darren Shaw’s squad and Pitts is confident that the Hornets coach is the man to take the club forward.

He said: "Darren’s a great lad. If you look back over the past few weeks and the available players he has had to pick from, he has still managed to put a team on the pitch. He has still managed to get favours from other clubs to get loan players on board and he was very quick to spot the players released by Workington and get them signed up. The performances have been fairly consistent and pretty entertaining, even though games have slipped away from us. I am confident we won’t finish bottom. We should finish above London Skolars and even Workington.  So I think with limited time and limited resources, and at a club that was struggling, bearing in mind that the lads hadn’t been paid since November but kept on training, Darren has done a good job."

Shaw will have to play the remainder of the season without assistant coach Paul Anderson. He has received a nine-match ban after his sending off at Hunslet earlier this month.