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Sprightly Cougars leave Skolars in the slow lane
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| Replacement Brendan Rawlins scored four tries. |
Keighley Cougars 58 London Skolars 12
In the last meeting between these two sides, Keighley found themselves caught up in the aftermath of a motorway accident, arriving at the Skolars ground with only minutes to spare. Unsurprisingly, they lost.
They had a score to settle. There was to be no such problem on Bank Holiday Monday at Cougar Park. Barry Eaton had fine tuned his team and pre-programmed their sat-nav system taking them route one to the London try line.
The performance was ferociously fleet footed, culminating in ten Cougars tries.
Destroyer in chief was the amiable Brendan Rawlings. Amiable off the pitch that is. On the pitch he was a one man wrecking crew who dismantled the London defence time and again to help himself to four tries.
He didn't even enter the fray until 15 minutes in, by which time Keighley were six points to the good. Their speed of thought was just too quick for the visitors.
Quick play balls caught the Skolars offside in quick succession. The second being in the London 20, in front of the posts. and Danny Jones' penalty opened the Cougars' account with seven minutes gone.
Three minutes later, lightning fast acceleration and accuracy of passing saw Keighley surge the full length of the field.
Craig Fawcett dummied to make the initial line break. He found Neil Lowe on his outside. Lowe beat a man, drew Paul Thorman's tackle and offloaded using a back of the hand flick pass to supporting centre Dan Potter.
Potter likewise drew the tackle and his timed pass to winger Ryan Smith gave the speedster a clear 30 metre charge for the line, London full-back Farrid Goutta being unable to get across. Jones' conversion attempt missed.
However, Fawcett's kick led to Keighley's second try. On the fifth tackle, he put up a spiralling bomb. Potter out-jumped the defence man, to knock the ball back to Rawlins. With only his second touch of the game, Rawlins rampaged over from eight metres out for his first score of the day. Jones duly converted to create a 12-point Cougar advantage.
London cut this advantage by two points following Potter's high hit on Goutta, Thorman successfully kicking for goal after 23 minutes.
Keighley once more increased their tempo to catch the Skolars offside and gain a further set of six during which they worked the ball to stretch the elastic-like London defence until it snapped. Rawlins bludgeoned his way past Thorman following Fawcett's pass to score.
London's only answer to the Cougars intensity was to try and slow the game down. Jermaine Wray was held down following a high tackle, but a play later Jones found Richard Knight on the left. and Knight's strength was sufficient to crash through the tackles of Jamie Nowland and Corey Sims in the left hand corner.
Jones' successful conversion increased the home side's advantage to 22-2, with three minutes of the half remaining.
This proved sufficient for Jon Presley to burn up the pitch for a fine solo try. Again Jones converted, taking the half-time scoreline to 28-2.
Upon the resumption the Cougars remained in pole position. Wray again proved to be the target of London's frustration, being the recipient of a high shot from prop Puna Rasaubale.
While he went to the cooler for ten minutes, Keighley took a quick tap from which Rawlins completed his hat-trick, by careering through Jermaine Coleman. Jones tagged on the extras to close the game out at 34-2 on 43 minutes.
Keighley fully exploited their one man advantage by scoring tries from their next three sets, Rawlins claiming his fourth with a blazing diagonal run that was set up thanks to Jones' long pass to Knight who allowed him to dive in at the left hand corner.
Lastly, Lowe scored to the right of the posts after nonchalantly stepping out of Coleman's grasp. Jones' conversions meant that the score board had rattled up to 52-2.
With his sentence served Rasaubale re-entered the fray, immediately driving up the centre as he and Barker tried to rejuvenate the Londoners.
Paul Trainer intercepted a Keighley pass but did not have the power or acceleration to cross the whitewash.
After 63 minutes London did however cross the chalk after the Cougars were caught offside and substitute Wayne Keir found a gap which he squeezed through.
Immediately Keighley replied. Wray danced past Sims before unleashing Presley who darted diagonally towards the left hand corner. Pursglove ran the decoy line as Raynor ran the inside angle. Presley switched the play back inside to allow Raynor the simplest of scores, unopposed and behind the posts.
Jones converted, to complete his 18-point match haul.
As Keighley took their foot off the gas, Thorman popped up from close range to take Barker's short pass to claim the Skolars' second try. Thorman tagged on the extras for a final score line of 58-12.
A beaming Barry Eaton stated: "It was important that we put in a performance today and got back to winning ways.
"In the last ten minutes we were perhaps a little sloppy, which allowed them another score. But overall I'm very pleased and it keeps us up there."
1:58pm Thursday 8th May 2008
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