Dewsbury Rams suffer heavy defeat against Featherstone Rovers

Dean Parata grabbed four tries for Featherstone while Craig Hall added a hat-trick and kicked 24 points to take his points haul to 36 for the afternoon.

Rovers’ other tries came from Craig Kopczak, Gareth Gale and Luke Cooper.

Dewsbury’s tries came from Bayley Liu, Tom Garratt, Reiss Butterworth and Lewis Carr, with Liam Finn landing four conversions.

The defeat was the Rams’ third in a row following a loss at London Broncos and a 56-12 home defeat at the hands of Toulouse Olympique the previous week.

“I am embarrassed, it was a really, really awful defensive performance,” reflected Greenwood.

“We are playing two good teams two weeks in a row, I felt positive coming off last week but I don’t feel that today. The manner of the tries, they just ran straight through.

“It is hard to take any positives at the minute. I will watch the video back, there might be some but the way we just caved in around the middle just wasn’t good enough.”

The Rams were 20-6 behind at the break but conceded 24 points without reply before scoring their next try. Greenwood continued: “We competed for a bit. The extra quality just showed on the scoreboard.

“There were a couple of chances we had that we didn’t score but they scored with their opportunities. But 20-6 is a tough score to bring back against these tough teams.”

Greenwood felt there were plenty of positives for his side to take from their defeats against London and Toulouse.

He was left with little to be pleased about following their defeat to Featherstone - who have now enjoyed their best-ever start to a league season with Sunday’s win their ninth in a row.

He added: “I knew it was going to be a tough run of fixtures. Against London, the scoreline wasn’t a true reflection of that game.

“We competed and came off pretty positive against Toulouse last week. Today, although we scored a few nice tries, the ones we conceded and the defensive softness, it is hard to take anything from that.”

Dewsbury were forced into late changes after players were forced to drop out of the side prior to kick off.

Tom Garratt was deployed in the second row and Greenwood added: “Tom has been really consistent for us. He is probably the only one out of those middle guys that can play second row.

“We had a late withdrawal, so Tom went to second row. I thought he did alright, he stood up to them and carried strong. It is really hard for me to talk about positives, I am feeling down after that.”

The defeat leaves Dewsbury with three wins from their nine league games. This weekend they will prepare for a crunch clash with Oldham, whose last win was against Halifax Panthers on May 1.

They have won just twice in 10 games and sit two places below the Rams in the table.