Cougars 54, Whorkington 8 - Cougars made it ten out of ten with another super show in front of a disappointing crowd.

Calls from the club for 5000 fans to pack the ground in celebration of recent success fell flat as fans preferred to enjoy the sun elsewhere.

They missed another Cougar epic with Martin Wood again in inspirational form. Three tries and seven goals -- in just over half a match -- is impressive enough, but his organisation on the field is the key factor.

At his best he is decisive, incisive and a dominating force within the team. The fact that his recently discovered kicking form is adding points which would have gone begging early in the season is a massive bonus.

His influence was glaringly obvious after Karl Harrison decided to save his greatest asset for Wednesday's trip to Oldham.

He was called to the bench after 56 minutes, but having clocked up 26 points Wood was reluctant to leave the pitch, perhaps knowing he had another great chance of beating Johnny Wasilyw's points record.

In the end he trotted off to massive applause, but the Cougars clarly missed his influence.

Town started brightly enough, Stuart Hoyles crashing over in the seventh minute.

That was the Cougar wake up call and Woody led the charge.

Four minutes later he put a neat little grubber kick through and strolled through a static defence to touch down under the posts and add a simple goal.

The Cougars were in front and on their way.

After Wood added a penalty to make it 8-4 Dean Hanger set up the next try with a burst through the Town defence. He looked like scoring himself, but stopped, looked for support, and with no one within 20 yards spotted Graeme Hallas tearing up the left.

He crashed over out wide and the Cougars were on a roll. Ian Hughes burst through two tackles to send Jason Lee over, and a neat pass by the impressive Nathan Antonik sent Wood over for his second.

His conversion made it 26-4 at the break.

A towering 40-20 from Wood set him up for his hat-trick. From the scrum he received the ball and raced diagonally left until the defence split apart giving him the room to dive over. He converted and followed up by adding the exras to the try of the game.

Antonik collected the ball on half way, released Paul Harrison who found Richard Smith and he outpaced the defence.

Wood was pulled off and briefly left the Cougars looking disorganised, allowing Town their best spell. William crashed in down the blind side, then raced 50 metres having collected Paul Owen's sloppy pass.

Lee did well to chase back, Hanger did better to stop a certain try in the corner before Cougars regained their composure as Danny Seal exerted his growing influence.

He crashed over after a great pass from Steve Pickles, and raced 60 metres to set up position for Max Tomlinson - who was outstanding all afternoon - to go on a determined run, his arm snaking out of the tackle to touch down.

Lee added his second conversion and the Cougars were home with a bag full of points and another fine victory in the bag.

Cougars: Hanger; Tomlinson, R Smith, Hallas, Lee; Seal, Antonik; Hall Ramshaw, Slicker, Harrison, Hughes, Wood. Subs (all used): Owen, Walker, Stephenson, Pickles.

Workington Town: Watson; Huddart, McGrady, Smith, Lewthwaite; Cook, Horner; Sturm, Sice, Barker, Beaumont, Hoyles, samuel. Subs: (all used): Luku, Heaney, Tunstall, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.