England students too smart for Keighley Cougars Reserves

COUGARS Reserves were well beaten by English Universities in their final warm-up fixture ahead of next month’s Student World Cup.

Keighley made the worst possible start and found themselves behind after Aaron Hall sauntered through the middle to touch down.

Things went from bad to worse with less than ten minutes on the clock as Marcus Stock went through for the students.

The hosts' failure to score was then punished as Cougars' own Kieran Smith (based at Sheffield Hallam University) scored, though a poor conversion attempt followed.

The home side finally registered as Aidan Scully broke down the right and cut inside to leave a number of defenders in his wake to slide home before converting his own try.

That was only a brief reprieve though as the students scored twice in quick succession.

Josh Hamilton stole a march on the defence for a routine score before Jason Bass added to the scoreline.

Dom Bryan added insult to injury with a score to leave the Reserves trailing by 26 points at the interval.

Cougars started the second half brightly with two tries as Rikki Sheriffe and Liam Darville went over.

The referee then sin-binned Kieran Smith, who, after former Batley centre Zack McComb and Brandon Nassau, was the third player to see yellow on the day.

There was a moment to savour for young Josh Smith as some tidy rugby from Cougars sent the youngster away and the 17-year-old dived over in the corner to mark his debut with a try.

The hard work was undone though not long after good play from Aaron Hall led to Dan Harrison scoring and putting daylight between the sides once more.

Jacob Morgan effectively ended Cougars’ hopes of a comeback with James Mason going over to leave the home side deflated, Jack Lazenby also scoring two late tries.

COUGARS: Barker, McConville, Scully, Rawlinson, Smith, Darville, Sheriffe, Cherryholme, Weatherill, Price, Connell, Sagar, Kinnaird. Subs: Brown, Adams, Nassau, Clarkson, Robinson.