On a cold & windy afternoon at The Ellis, Workington Zebras suffered their 3rd successive Cumbria One defeat – and 12th overall this season – as they went down 43 – 5 to Whitehaven.

Within the opening ten minutes, Workington found themselves 14 – 0 down as Haven swamped their half with waves of attacks. But then they finally managed to control the situation and blunt their visitors’ rampant proclivities with doughty defensive work that often led to fiercely contested scrummaging.

But Whitehaven rode the impasse and after stepping up a gear cut through the Zebras’ backline twice more and after 25 minutes had already wrapped up the Bonus Point with two more tries to go 26 – 0 clear.

However, Workington slowly regained the advantage and finally got chances to venture into Haven territory with Sam Robinson, James Beck & the McCrickerd brothers all delivering threatening surges, but for all their efforts, they could not find the breakthrough against Haven’s ‘Maroon Wall” & the one crumb of comfort was that they stopped the try flow and remained 26 – 0 down at half time.

Whitehaven were not to be held back much longer as the whistle blew to kick off the second half & wasted no time in outfoxing their hosts to snaffle two more tries within 10 minutes of the restart.

But then Workington began to refocus & once again stemmed the rampant Haven charge whilst also enjoying more extensive visits into their half with clever attacks & dogged scrummaging excellently orchestrated by evergreen captain Andrew Bowe.

One sequence of scrums left Workington painfully shy of the whitewash but on the final scrum it was Robinson who quickly darted over to give the Zebras a well deserved try & though unconverted, another "nilling" was avoided.

However, that was the high watermark for Workington & despite another couple of inroads into their opponents half they couldn't make the final breakthrough.

Haven were determined to finish off on a high - in the last 10 minutes they exploited their hosts' tiredness & the inevitable happened 3 minutes from time when they broke clear from halfway to deliver a solo try & conversion to make it 43 - 5, a result which keeps them a distant second behind Upper Eden in Cumbria One.

Workington stay second bottom & will hope to pull clear of basement club Creighton when they go there this weekend.

By John Hastings @ The ESG