SAM COLLINS has hailed the contribution of his full-backs in his freshened up Hartlepool United side.

Since taking caretaker charge for the last two games, Michael Duckworth has found his best form on the right side, with teenager Dan Jones impressing on the opposite flank.

Duckworth scored against Sheffield United last week, and created the opening goal in Saturday’s win at Exeter, where Jones has the confidence to strike at goal from 25 yards before heading against the crossbar.

Collins, assisted by Brian Honour who has returned to the club in a temporary coaching role, has had a week on the club’s training ground with his players in preparation for Saturday’s game with Luton.

And he hopes for more improvement at the weekend.

“Michael Duckworth is non-stop, up and down the pitch all day long – a great kid with a brilliant attitude and since he came back in the team from injury he’s been excellent,’’ he admitted.

“It’s about doing it in the right areas in the pitch and the shape we had means the likes of Michael, Lewis Hawkins and Ryan Brobbel can play with freedom and get about the pitch.

“Dan Jones was doing it on the opposite side, getting up and down the flank with energy down the sides. I want my lads to play with energy and get in the box, that’s how you score goals.

“Some of the interplay between the attacking players was very good.’’

Collins was handed a coaching role under former boss Colin Cooper this season, taking responsibility with the club’s younger players and looking after the reserve side.

It’s given him and his players a grounding for the first-team chance which has arrived in recent weeks and Collins admitted: “I’ve known about these young lads for a long time at the club and I’ve always kept an eye on young players, I’ve tried to help them in training when they have trained with the first-team.

“I’ve spent a lot of time working with them and seen them develop and get better.

“When I was asked to look after things I was always going to make changes and put them in my team. We will improve, I will make sure. We will train and train properly, work on shape and be hard to beat- then get the flair players on the ball and they will hurt teams.’’

Collins and Honour will lead training at Maiden Castle today and the caretaker boss has admitted he won’t pick himself to play while he remains in charge.

But while enjoyable and rewarding, Collins joked it’s also a frustrating job in the technical area.

“The worst part is not playing, I said to Stephen Pears I just wanted to get out on the pitch and play,’’ he said. “I was jumping for headers all game and making tackles!

“It’s horrible, but very enjoyable when you win. For however long I’m asked to look after things I will work hard and the players are going to have to match that and work hard and do what I expect of them.

“They have done that since they were in on Sunday morning and through the week, they have listened to what I wanted and taken on board the plans we put in place.

“We scored two good goals at Exeter, but I’m more concentrating on things going on at the other end defensively. The best goal for me was probably the second, the way we worked the ball to Charlie was something we worked on all week and it worked a treat.’’

Pools reserves, featuring Marlon Harewood and Jonathan Franks, yesterday lost 3-1 at Doncaster Rovers.