Understrength Thornhill Trojans well beaten despite big effort at Featherstone

With no available substitutes the players ran themselves into the ground. It was not pretty and the longer the game went on, the tiring Thornhill players began to regularly leak tries as they went on to lose 58-8.

Man of the match for the Trojans was second row Lewis Bates who tried valiantly against the much bigger Featherstone forwards. There was also a courageous performance from Brad Llewellyn at full-back. However, this was always going to be a case of damage limitations for the team.

James Metcalfe opened the scoring for Featherstone Lions with an early try. As Thornhill back pedalled towards their own try line, the ball was worked out to the wing and Metcalfe cut back inside to wrong foot the defence to go over for an unconverted try.

The visitors recovered from this early setback to give hope to their travelling supporters. Bailey Lee took play towards the Lions try line, kicked the ball forward and the rebound was favourable for him to pounce for an unconverted try.

There was then a moment of controversy. From the restart Featherstone appeared to kick directly out into touch. Much to the dismay of the Thornhill players the referee ruled that the ball had bounced in play and awarded the restart to the Lions right in front of the Thornhill sticks. There was then a tap restart and Ash Smith ploughed over for a try which Richard Frankland converted.

Undeterred, the visitors put together a good attacking move and headed towards the try line. Lee then put a chip towards the corner, but this was just out of reach to enable Callam Gamble to complete the attack.

Lions then took advantage of a fortunate bounce of the ball as Metcalfe crossed again and Frankland converted.

A good interchange of passes down the wing undid the Thornhill defence. Featherstone kept play alive and Davi Garahan scored a try to which Frankland added the extras.

The sin-binning of Sam Ratcliffe for dissent on the half-hour did nothing to help the visitors’ cause and the Lions used this 10-minute spell to run in two further tries.

The penalty from the sin-binning was awarded and the hosts swiftly opted to run the ball with Nathan Hammond sliding over for a try. Frankland converted.

By now the Thornhill defence was floundering and desperate for the interval. An inside pass close to the try line saw a non-existent defence allow Jack Brears to score another try converted by Frankland.

After a much needed half-time break the Thornhill players came out with Ratcliffe back on, but the break did not seem to have put the home team out of their rhythm. A good passing move created space for Gareth Gale to score a try goaled by Frankland.

But there was a moment of relief for Thornhill when a kick to the corner was pounced on by Ratcliffe to score a try he could not convert.

From then on it was just a matter of the Trojans counting down the minutes to full-time as they desperately tried to repel the Featherstone forward drive.

A tiring defence was undone by an interchange of passes down the middle and Garahan finished the attack with Frankland again successful with the conversion.

Former Batley Bulldogs forward Luke Cooper was next to score as he bounced off a series of attempted tackles to barge over.

Another fine attacking move was too much for the visitors’ struggling defence to cope with and Garahan completed his hat-trick.

The referee finally showed Thornhill some mercy and blew up for full-time early.