Wigton Triumph in 1st League Derby!

The victory was built upon a massive display from the Wigton forwards and in the end Aspatria had no answer to the driving play of the green pack.

The first half began with both teams clearly fired up for this first Cumbrian derby game, and Wigton set their stall out early with some powerful ball carrying from the forwards well directed from scrum half by Fergus Ledingham. It was this early dominance that led to the first try scored within 5mins by Matthew Atkinson from close range however David Hanabury was not able to add the extras into a strong head wind.
This first try gave us a huge dose of confidence and we continued in the same vein with forwards making holes and the backs exploiting space out wide and we were attacking with accuracy that had been missing in previous games. Our second try came after 11mins from excellent driving play and Matthew Atkinson scored again, this time David Hanabury kicked the conversion.

We were unlucky in the first half to lose Andy Brown to a rib injury who had been playing well and he was replaced by Ewan Shand for his first senior game against Aspatria, he moved into the second row and Jay Henderson, who was tireless all afternoon, moved onto the flank.
We continued to apply a great deal of pressure and despite Aspatria receiving 3 warnings from the official nothing more than penalties were forthcoming. Aspatria used the conditions well and they began to attack our line with purpose, resulting in us conceding a number of penalties around the tackle area. Unfortunately we also gave away the penalties in very kickable positions and we conceded 12 points in the first half from the boot of Jack Clegg. Our indiscipline also resulted in 2 yellow cards, one for Robert Marrs, although it was a case of mistaken identity, for an infringement in the red area and one for Tom Gardner for a dangerous tackle although both could have seen to be harsh especially considering the warnings Aspatria received with no sanction. Down to 13 men we defended superbly well to keep Aspatria from crossing our line and we went into half time at 12 apiece.

The half time chat was all about more of the same with the only change needing to be listening more to the referee and sorting out our discipline! We started the second half well and dominated throughout, with our forwards increasingly in the ascendancy with some barnstorming runs from Matthew Atkinson who made 80 metres from a restart when the Aspatria pack failed to make their first up tackles. Our discipline also got much better and indeed it was Aspatria who were to find themselves down to 14 men when their second row was sin binned for an offence at the breakdown. We scored 3 more tries in the second half through Greg Smith, who was calm and assured at full back all afternoon, Andrew Bell who was prominent in our driving play all and captain Matthew Atkinson secured his hat trick (to groans from the rest of the pack) to cap a tremendous display.

David Hanabury secured 1 of the extras to mean the score finished 29-12 in our favour with us also picking up a 4 try bonus point. It was very pleasing to not concede any tries in the game and our defence will be tested next week when we host Sandbach who are setting the early pace. But we will be buoyed by this win and we are looking forward to the challenge next Saturday.