Cleck pay price for heavy defeat

8:56pm Sunday 13th April 2008

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Penrith 34, Cleckheaton 3

Cleckheaton's poor run of form in North Division One continued at Penrith yesterday.

After a spirited performance against the professionals of Doncaster last Tuesday, they travelled with a positive attitude to do battle with a team still fighting relegation.

After initially making inroads into the Penrith half, a series of penalty offences pushed Cleck back into their own half.

With ten minutes gone, quick thinking from the Penrith scrum half caught Cleck retreating slowly as a penalty was awarded and an astute cross-kick allowed the Penrith left wing to touch down in the corner.

Penrith soon kicked a penalty but then play centred in the middle of an increasingly muddy pitch for the remainder of the half.

Cleck pulled a penalty back but suffered a body blow on the stroke of half-time when the Cumbrians' No 8 slipped out of an attempted tackle, charged up the middle of the field and off-loaded to his support for a try under the posts.

The restart and the assistance of the breeze didn't help Cleck as they seemed incapable of maintaining forward impetus, either giving away penalties or dropping the ball.

From one of these dropped balls, Penrith hacked the ball down the relatively dry wing to score in the corner and repeated the process minutes later to establish an unassailable 27-3 lead.

The home side added a further try before the end to run out worthy winners at 34-3.