Wakefield Trinity Ladies’ Head Coach, Charlie Doherty, was proud of how his side shaped up we took an 8-4 victory over Castleford Tigers at the Be Well Support Stadium.
As a celebration dedicated to the stadium’s East Stand, which will be demolished under new development plans, a busy day of Rugby League started with a tasty affair as we hosted Castleford for the first game of the day.
This wasn ‘t the first derby day clash of the year, though, as Wakefield came out on top in round one of the Challenge Cup back in March as we opened our 2022 in style.
This was a very new Tigers side, however, and after a first-half that consisted of a very frustrating attacking play from the home side, their persistence paid off as Nat Romano opened her Trinty account.
After a monster break from Leonie Lawson, followed by a neat offload from Abbie Millward, Romano found herself with the ball in her hands, finally crossing the whitewash to open the scoring.
Trinity’s tails were up, and it didn’t take long for the home side to double their advantage. Millward played an instrumental part once again as she was caught high on the visitors’ 10-metre line.
Her tap-and-go was pushed into the hands of Cassy Lawson, who took on the Castleford pack to touch down, something which really pleased the head coach.
“I am really happy to have got our first league win of the season. Slight frustration as we know we could have really pulled away if we’d played a little bit smarter, but, overall, really proud of the girls as they stuck in and came out on top of a real arm-wrestle of a game.
“We wanted to use our forwards to get us on the front foot and dominate both in attack and defence, which I feel we did for the majority of the game.
“It was great to see two of our hard-working forwards get their reward for that.”
With their first league victory since 2019, Trinity Ladies can now use this as a platform to push on, looking ahead to a busy July as they look ahead to another home game against Barrow on 17th July.
“When we stuck to what we’d focus on in training we looked good. I think at times we tried too hard which caused most of our errors and gave Castleford too much ball.
“Defensively, I feel our contact and numbers in tackles were great and was good to see the defensive side of our game improve again.
“We will be reviewing the game and looking at where and why we were successful/unsuccessful during the game and using that to build on and prepare for Barrow.”
You can follow all Wakefield Trinity Ladies’ games this season by following their respective social media channels.