Sheffield Steeldogs’ defender Tim Smith believes Sunday’s 4-1 victory over Hull Pirates will spark a revival in the team’s fortunes.

The result was the Steeldogs’ second success in their last 11 EPL games, but Smith is confident the team can maintain that level of form in the run-up to the play-offs.

“I don’t think I can explain how much it means to the boys when we beat Hull – there’s no love lost,” he told the Sheffield Star.

“We dominated the first two periods, we should have really put it to bed in the first. We missed a few chances and we had a couple disallowed.

“We cost ourselves some penalties in the third period, which probably we shouldn’t have given that swings momentum back into their court – we were back on the back foot there for a while.

“We just had to ride the storm like we did. That’s a lesson that we have to learn – when we are 3-1 or 4-1 up we shouldn’t be taking penalties.

“Overall it was a good team performance. We had three solid lines and it’s great to see Cole Shudra back and playing well.

“Hopefully we can just move on from this to Friday against Manchester and all being well, pick up two more vital points.

“Hopefully there should be additions to the line-up coming in this week, just giving us more strength in depth. Things are on the up and we will kick on from here.”