Carlisle’s injury-ravaged season continued at Broughton Park where they were comprehensively beaten 60-5 in North One West.
They had to give first team debuts to four players, one of whom suffered a likely season-ending hand injury and had lost James Telford with an injury in the warm-up.
The experienced Max Connon had already been a late withdrawal, not ready to resume after suffering an injury against Penrith the previous week.
Coming in were Henry Longworth, Mark Greenwood, Sam Potter and Luke Short, and a real baptism of fire was in store. Short was the one who suffered a serious hand injury.
Within six minutes Park were on the scoreboard after a line-out inside the Carlisle 22 gave the Manchester side the chance to maul the ball across and over for their first try.
Six minutes later the Park kicker missed a sitter in front of the posts.
However, he nailed the conversion for the second try minutes later, when their full back found a gap in the blue wall to go through for a 12-0 lead.
Carlisle attempted to break down the left with some territorial position inside the Park 22, but the home defence was sound and turned over the ball, giving their fly half the chance to put boot to ball and relieve the pressure.
In fact the Broughton fly half used this tactic to good effect all half, with the wind at his back, to keep Carlisle pinned back in their own half for long periods.
Another penalty infringement by Carlisle gave him the opportunity for Park to have another line-out close to the Carlisle line and despite some desperate defence they crossed for their third try.
Carlisle managed to get points on the board late on as a penalty kick to touch was pushed back into the field by a Park player straight into the arms of Euan Forlow, who proceeded to scoot down the line and over for Carlisle’s try at the end of the half.
Carlisle were by no means out of this game at this point and had reason to hope that with the wind at their backs for the second half, could use this to their advantage.
It was not to be, however, as experience triumphed over youth as Park applied pressure, notably through their number eight who was a handful all game, to drive gaps through the Carlisle defence for others to exploit.
In short, a torrid time in the second half, saw Carlisle concede six tries without answer as Park ran out easy winners.
Whilst there was no lack of endeavour, Carlisle simply had no answer to stopping Broughton as they exploited any weakness in the Carlisle defence. The debutants were not disgraced by any means.
The full 20 points have now been docked from Carlisle’s League record for unfulfilled fixtures and they now sit on minus one at the bottom of the table.
