Thirty-two unanswered second half points from the home side sees Whitehaven ease past the Rams.
Following on from last week’s poor showing in the Challenge Cup against Workington, the Rams headed back up to Cumbria with a much-changed team, hoping for different results. New signing Ben Blackmore came in on the left wing, whilst three players on dual registration from Hull KR came into the side.
After a twenty-minute delay, the match finally got underway and following a strong start by the Rams, a penalty gave Whitehaven good field position and Tom Wilkinson went over for the home side, with Alex Bishop adding the extras. Whitehaven were then down to twelve for ten minutes as Tom Walker was yellow carded for a tip tackle. Bishop then sent over a penalty after he was hit off the ball to extend the home side’s advantage to eight.
For the next ten minutes the pressure started to build on the Whitehaven line with repeat sets seeing the Rams go close, until Matty Beharrell cut through the Whitehaven defence and sent Davey Dixon over to score, which Beharrell converted. Then on the stroke of half time, a glorious chip over the top by Rowan Milnes was collected by Beharrell who fed Milnes to score, once again Beharrell converted and the Rams led at the break by four points.
At the start of the second half, the Rams seemingly couldn’t get any field position and invited pressure on their own line, this showed following a goal line drop out, as a gap opened up in the defence and Jake Bradley scored, converted by Bishop. Guy Graham then went over from short range for Whitehaven, converted by Bishop. After a penalty under sticks kicked by Bishop, Whitehaven managed to score three more times in the final ten minutes from Bishop, Callum Phillips and Karl Dixon, all of which were converted by Bishop, adding to another dismal day in Cumbria for the Rams.
After the match Head Coach Lee Greenwood said “I’m bitterly disappointed with today’s result, I thought we looked good in the first half, we looked a threat with the ball and good without the ball, we still weren’t at our best, but we improved on last week. Then the second half we got it badly wrong, we spent all the time in our own half and towards the end of the game we had totally gone. In that second half we didn’t get it right with or without the ball and massively lacked energy in the last 15, I’m not sure if the score was a true reflection of the game but it certainly wasn’t good enough.”
Whitehaven RLFC (40): Doyle, Martin, Taylor, Evans, Bulman, Dixon, Williams, Walker, Bishop, Graham, King, Cooper, Wilkinson
Interchanges: Phillips, Aiye, Dawson, Bradley
Tries: Wilkinson (6’), Bradley (48’), Graham (61’), Bishop (70’), Phillips (75’), Dixon (78’)
Conversions: Bishop (6/6)
Penalties: Bishop (16’, 67’)
Yellow Cards: Walker (15’)
Dewsbury Rams (12): Laulu-Togagae, Gabriel, Graham, Dixon, Blackmore, Beharrell, Milnes, Annakin, Speakman, Magrin, Tomlinson, Ryder, Knowles
Interchanges: Sykes, Richards, Beckett, Kidd
Tries: Dixon (28’), Milnes (40’)
Conversions: Beharrell (2/2)
Our next game sees us back at the Tetley’s Stadium on Sunday 20th March where we will be taking on Newcastle Thunder, kick off 15:00.
