Wigton suffer heavy defeat at Egremont

Wigton travelled to Egremont short of many players due to unavailability and the speedy Egremont backs took advantage scoring 7 tries.

Early pressure from Egremont saw a Wigton player penalised for holding on and a simple penalty gave the hosts a 3 nil lead after 7 minutes. Egremont collected the ball directly from the restart, the ball was passed along to the winger who kicked the ball over the full back and won the chase to touch down for their 1st try, converted to extend the lead to 10 nil.

The Wigton forwards were dominant throughout the game with Robert Marrs leading from the front and 17 year old debutant Jonny Dodd giving a strong running performance at number 8. Two strong drives in the Egremont 22 were rewarded with a penalty, Wigton choose a scrum and Fraser Ledingham playing at scrum half dived in at the corner to give an unconverted try to bring the score to 10-5 after 17 minutes. However 3 minutes later Wigton lost the ball in contact and clean passing along the backs allowed Egremont to score a second converted try.

Things got worse straight from the restart as Egremont picked up the ball and their speedy backs done the rest to score a 3rd try easily converted to lead 24-5 after 22 minutes. It seemed that every time time Wigton made a mistake they were punished as happened 7 minutes later when the winger broke through a couple of weak tackles to race over the line, although the difficult conversion was missed, the lead was now 29-5. Wigtons line out and driving maul began to pay dividends as Elliot Armstrong touched down for Wigtons 2nd try. This was short lived as Egremont kicked over the top towards the corner and try number 5 was inevitable giving the hosts a comfortable 34-10 half time lead.

The second half began with the Wigton forwards on top and an Egremont player was shown the yellow card by referee Maughan for infringing. Wigton opted for a scrum and as the Wigton forwards drove forward a try was inevitable as the pack piled over the line with Elliot Armstrong touching down for Wigtons 3rd try. A second yellow card was shown to an Egremont player for going into the side of the maul just as the first player was coming back onto the pitch.

On 61 minutes the Egremont full back picked up the ball in midfield, avoided a couple of tackles and found himself clean through to give Egremont a 6th try, the conversion was kicked and the score was now an unassailable 41-15. Another yellow card was shown to an Egremont player for infringing shortly followed by one for Wigtons Owen Sinclair who was allegedly leading with his forearm. With a couple of minutes to go the Wigton pack were heading for the line when the maul was pulled down, a 4th yellow card was handed out and referee Maughan ran beneath the posts to award Wigton a deserved penalty try to give Wigton a bonus point and reduce the deficit to 41-22.

However Egremont had the last laugh as Wigton lost the ball near the touch line picked up by an Egremont who ran down the line to score a 7th try to give the home team a well deserved 46-22 victory.