Workington Town 6-42 Halifax Panthers: Highlights and match report

Halifax Panthers have kickstarted their season with a thumping win over Workington Town.

Able to play this rearranged fixture due to being out of the cup, the Panthers put 40 points on Workington to build some momentum ahead of a game against Whitehaven next week.

Highlights:

Panthers power through in first 40
First half scores from Ben Kavanagh, Kevin Larroyer, Dan Murray and Ed Barber set Halifax’s stall out early as they cemented their dominance and gave themselves a much needed boost after a difficult start to the season.

Back-to-back tries wrap things up for the Panthers
A break and good footwork from Zack McComb and good support play from Louis Jouffret helped set Ben Tibbs up for a try and two minutes later a score from former Hull KR half Joe Keyes wrapped up the win with a good show of pace to complete a perfect performance from the halfback.

Match Report:

It didn’t take long for Halifax to get things going as they looked for a statement win to give their season a much needed boost and it came courtesy of Ben Kavanagh who crashed onto a short ball after some superb link up between Louis Jouffret and Brandon Moore.

Joe Keyes, who had an outstanding afternoon, then conjured up the Panthers’ next score before the 10 minute mark. His ball sent Joe Arundel through a gap. He was brought down but Keyes was on hand to put Frenchman Kevin Larroyer over.

A point per minute and it continued when Dan Murray scored in the 18th minute from a Workington error. The first half scoring was then wrapped up by Ed Barber after good work from Elliot Morris.

Remarkably, the Panthers went 18 minutes without scoring after such a dominant first 30, but eventually talisman Adam Tangata scored from a Louis Jouffret inside ball in the 48th minute.

Then came the game breaking back-to-back scores. The first came from Ben Tibbs after good work from Zack McComb before Keyes crowned a superb performance with a try in which he showed good pace to score.

With a quarter of the game left, that was oddly the last try of the game from Halifax but Keyes did ensure he kept his 100% record with the boot to make it 42-0.

The last score of the afternoon went the way of Alex Clegg of Workington from a neat kick but it did little to change the complexion of the afternoon’s rugby.