GATESHEAD Thunder have by far their best chance to halt their season-long losing streak tomorrow when London Skolars visit the International Stadium, writes MARK SMITH.

Thunder are still winless despite 18 attempts in Co-operative Championship One, their closest brush with victory being the 32-all draw played out between themselves and tomorrow’s opponents when the two teams met in the capital back in April.

The Skolars lie second-bottom of the table with four wins to their name, although they suffered a 26-16 loss at third-bottom South Wales Scorpions last weekend. That result came on the same day Gateshead were beaten 48-14 at home to Rochdale, with Kevin Neighbour in charge for the first time since being named as the official successor to Richard Pell as head coach.

Neighbour, who had been in caretaker charge for the past two months, said: “I was a little bit disappointed by how we started, and we seemed to be a little bit slow by conceding some early tries.

“That kick-started us for the next 10 minutes when we had a good spell of pressure down near their line, but we just did not break them during that period.”

Neighbour remains Thunder’s most capped player after more than 200 appearances in nine seasons at the club, but admitted that last week’s announcement was merely formalising an already-existing role.

He added: “It has been good and I have been busy.

“A lot of the stuff has just stayed the same because I have been back at the club for two months on a temporary basis.

“Now it has all been made official, it has just been continuing with talking to players and getting things generally sorted.”

Tomorrow’s game kicks off at 2pm, with Neighbour expecting to have a fully- fit squad despite a number of niggles emerging from the Rochdale match.