Linners Draws The Line As Cougars Defeated

[Cougars News]

Barrow Raiders 46-20 Keighley Cougars Match Report by Joshua Chapman (@JRCSport)

CRAIG Lingard was left frustrated by his side’s line defence after defeat in their first outing of 2018 away at familiar foes Barrow.

Despite an encouraging performance by the new look Cougars, they still shipped 8 tries as they fell to a 5^th loss in 12 months at Craven Park.

“I’m not one of these coaches who will come out with how we’ll take the positives, I look at the negatives and how we can improve,” said Lingard.

“Our goal-line defence today was not good enough, we’ve prided ourselves throughout pre-season about working really hard on goal-line defence and bashing each other about but we didn’t bash Barrow today.

“We conceded really soft tries whether it is people missing one-on-one challenges or just being lazy in defence and when I look back at the video, I will be indentifying people who were missing tackles and not working hard enough.

“You can’t play a game of Rugby with just the ball in your hand, half the game is defence and if people don’t want to defend then they won’t be in my team, it’s as simple as that.”

The Cougars had the games first opportunity to score but Adam Ryder knocked on just metres out from the line but it would be the home side that broke the deadlock when from dummy half, Nathan Mossop weaved through and put Joe Bullock in underneath the posts.

The Cougars thought they had drawn level when Liam Senior charged down a Jamie Dallimore kick before kicking it on himself in goal but unfortunately Ryder failed to ground the ball.

The visitors were punished once more as Declan Hulme broke the Keighley line and linked up with Ryan Johnston to send Luke Cresswell racing over.

Keighley did finally breach the Raiders line as Cresswell missed a tackle on Harry Aaronson and Aaronson punished his opposite number by scoring from 30 metres out.

The visitors were now on the ascendency and came close to levelling the scores but Hamish Barnes couldn’t get close enough to Lewis Fairhurst’s grubber.

Lingard will have been pleased though as his side closed the margin to two points as Fairhurst broke the Barrow line and found the line despite the interests of Cresswell.

Raiders quickly restored their advantage though when Jarrad Stack and Dan Toal linked up and the latter dived over.

The half finished though on a sour note as Barrow were prevented from taking a quick tap restart resulting in a punch-up close to the line that resulted in Raiders winger Brett Carter being sent to the sin-bin.

The Raiders scored the first points of the second forty when they exposed Keighley’s right edge defence for Hulme to score.

Mossop extended the Barrow lead minutes later as he weaved his way underneath the uprights after the Cougars prevented Alec Susino finding the try-line.

Keighley wouldn’t go down without a fight and Cameron Leeming showed the fighting spirit as with great determination he fended off 2 would be tacklers to fight his way over the Barrow line.

The Raiders experience was showing though as the game entered its latter stages and Tom Walker sidestepped around a Cougars defender to add his name to the scoresheet.

The Cougars fighting spirit continued to shine through and after keeping the ball alive, Keighley exposed a rare Barrow defensive lapse for Ryder to dive over.

Yet again though, Barrow turned the screw and kept the ball alive themselves for Cresswell to double his tally.

Dan Toal then registered his second try 3 minutes for time as he broke through a tired Keighley defensive line.

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