Rams suffer sixth league loss of the season on tricky Friday night in Greater Manchester as Leigh run in eight unanswered tries.
Following on from the much-improved performance against Newcastle two weeks ago, the Rams headed across the Pennines for a tough Friday night task against Leigh Centurions. With the squad ravaged by injuries, Will Tate started at fullback after joining on dual registration Hull KR.
After a good solid start to the game with some Leigh sets well defended and some clever kicking, the Rams were competing well until the tenth minute when Joe Mellor put in Nene MacDonald to score his first of the evening. However, the Rams looked to have fired back straight away when Lewis Carr went over to score in the corner, unfortunately for the Rams the try was chalked off for a forward pass.
The Rams continued to defend their line well until the twenty seventh minute when a loose carry dislodged the ball from a Rams player and Krisnan Inu collected to score, which he converted. After some Rams pressure resulted in Reiss Butterworth being held up on the last the Rams looked to be heading into the break ten points behind. This was until very late in the half when a Leigh break down the left resulted in Caleb Aekins scoring. With Inu again converting the try, the home side led 16-0 going into the break.
Leigh started the second half much like they finished the first and scored again through Keanen Brand after good work from Papua New Guinea international Edwin Ipape. Shortly after that score the Rams had some good field position, but unfortunately they couldn’t make it count. The home side then added another four scores in the second half through; MacDonald, McDonnell, Inu and Mellor completing a 44-0 victory.
After the match, Head Coach Lee Greenwood said, “Leigh are good team as we know, but we didn’t help ourselves with some of the mistakes that we made, we know we need to be near perfect against a team like Leigh to compete.”
“I thought in parts we defended quite well and we should’ve had a try early on but there were too many mistakes at key times.”
Leigh Centurions (44): Aekins, Inu, MacDonald, Chamberlain, Brand, Hingano, Mellor, Sidlow, Smith, Amone, McDonnell, Stone, Asiata
Interchanges: Jones, Roberts, Nisbet, Ipape.
Tries: MacDonald (9’, 52’), Inu (26’, 70’), Aekins (38’), Brand (42’), McDonnell (62’), Mellor (78’)
Conversions: Inu (6/8)
Dewsbury Rams (0): Tate, Gabriel, Graham, Greensmith, Carr, Sykes, Beharrell, Beckett, Butterworth, Stevens, Ryder, Tomlinson, Knowles
Interchanges: Sweeting, Smith, Schofield, Magrin
Attendance: 2569
Our next game sees us make the short journey across to the Fox’s Biscuits Stadium on Good Friday 15th April for the Heavy Woollen Derby against Batley Bulldogs, kick off 18:30.
