Wath Brow Hornets will continue a tough start to the season tomorrow when they entertain Siddal at Giel Park.
Along with West Hull, who beat the Hornets on the opening day, Siddal were the other silverware-winning team in the Premier Division last year.
It’s been the hardest possible start for Ian Rooney’s men but he was actually quite happy with the performance of his young squad in the 44-26 defeat at West Hull.
“We are in something of a transition but I was really pleased with the commitment and effort. It was really a spell of 15 minutes early in the second-half when we had no ball that West Hull scored too many points.
“But we kept going and scored tries late on so it wasn’t a bad effort for a tough opening game,” said Rooney.
The Hornets coach will also have noted that Siddal lost their opening game, going down 20-16 at home to West Bowling.
Morgan McCourt’s hat-trick actually puts him as the top try scorer in the Premier Division.
Egremont won the bragging rights with the 26-18 home win over Kells but they face a testing trip to Shaw Cross Sharks tomorrow, often a tough place to visit.
Coach Danny Barker was pleased with several aspects of his side’s play, particularly their efforts in the second-half when they scored 20 unanswered points to win the game.
The reverse was true for Kells coach Peter Smith who was pleased how the side built their 18-6 interval lead, following the systems set-out by the new coaching staff group.
Not so good was how they completely went away from that and suffered accordingly in a nightmare second-half.
Kells will be looking to make amends when they entertain Dewsbury Moor tomorrow.
Interestingly the west Cumbrians’ opponents tomorrow met last week at Dewsbury where the Moor came out on top 26-18 as the Sharks were bitten.
The opening five games in National Conference Cumbria were all well-contested with Ellenborough biggest-margin winners, 28-12 at Distington.
Tightest game was at Barrow Island where the home side lost 17-14 to Hensingham while six points was the difference in two games – Hindpool Tigers 30, Ulverston 24 and Seaton Rangers 22, Maryport 28.
The other game saw Dalton win 26-16 at Millom, so all-in-all a good start to the new-look competition and long may that continue.
Tomorrow’s fixtures are – Ulverston v Maryport; Dalton v Barrow Island; Distington v Seaton Rangers; Hensingham v Ellenborough; Hindpool Tigers v Millom.
