Rebels maintain form against plucky Sandbach

Sandbach brought a large, well-drilled squad to Warrington and showed a great deal of understanding and support when we had to tell them that we could only field one team and not the two sides as promised.

Starting with a strong six (of a nine-man squad), the Rebels piled into Sandbach, tagging and chasing them up the park forcing confusion and gaining turnover ball that helped us to a 5-1 half time lead with early tries from Harrison Dillon, Josh Barnard and Sam Roberts.

Substitutions from both teams changed the nature of the second half slightly towards Sandbach but Warrington maintained the pressure with further tries from Josh, Harrison (hat trick in total), Sam Roberts, Sam Hanna and a typically crafty one from Harry Whittaker, final result, 9-5.

In game two Ben Lomax continued to lead the drive for tags and territory, breaking our single match record with 16 tags in one match! Ben himself reaped the benefit of this hard work, picking up two turnovers and scoring from them both. Sam Roberts, Jacob Sollory-Park and Josh added tries to win a closer game against a new Sandbach six, 5-2.

The final game saw Warrington faced with the toughest opposition yet, Sandbach showed handling that we weren't able to match and had a couple of strong runners who showed real class. Sandbach took the lead twice early on in the match and it looked likely to be a close run thing until Josh Barnard decided to have his own one man show. Josh ran in four tries showing some great speed and determination!

Ruari Byrne scored from close in showing the value of support work as he was the first player on hand to take a pass after an attack broke down.

Jacob scored a clever try, exploiting a gap that appeared in front of him and Harrison got another pair of tries to give a final result of 9-6 against a very good side.

Coaches were delighted that eight of the squad scored tries and all of the squad registered tags. Top tagger was almost inevitably Ben Lomax, for the second week, Josh Barnard was top scorer with seven tries (don't lose the trophy this week Josh!), and the coaches' award went to Jacob who impressed with his tries because he looked for gaps and exploited them rather than running off in any old direction!