Wakefield Trinity Ladies fell to defeat on Sunday as Barrow Raiders took the spoils with a 69-4 victory at the Matt Johnson Prestige Stadium.
After a recent home game against the Cumbrian side, Trinity headed North to face the Raiders as we looked to bounce back in the Betfred Women’s Super League.
However, it was the home side who had much of the possession in the opening stages, making their advantage pay with three quickfire scores.
Trinity did come back into it though on a sunswept day at Craven Park. Three penalties in a row saw Sophia Liu take the ball into the Barrow defence, finally finding Kacey Davies as the Trinity second-row powered her way over the line.
It was the Raiders’ day, though, as they ran away with the victory in front of their home crowd to take a 68-4 win.
“I think we coped as well as we could have with the number of players we had missing and injuries we picked up in the game.
“We were down to two players on the bench within the first 10 minutes, so credit to the players that dug deep and played massive minutes for us.”
With a few players out, Trinity stood firm for the majority of the match, with Barrow struggling to find any weak spots in the Wakefield line.
However, after Barrow utilised their strength down the middle and their intricate play down the wing, Wakefield came under a barrage of pressure throughout the game, with Olivia Cummins and Ellie Brown having standout performances.
“We had to dig deep in defence as we knew we weren’t able to substitute players like for like.
“Olivia Cummins & Ellie Brown really led from the front on that standpoint and made a few tackles that really saved us at points in the game.”
With a couple of games coming up over August, the side will now look to bounce back for the remainder of the season, bringing players such as Emilia Povall-Clarke and Beth Cain, as she made her first team debut since making the step up from the academy.
That being said, with a positive attitude, the side will look to end 2022 in the best possible way as we start the second half of the season.
“We’ll review the game together and look at what we did well and where the easy fixes are, then focus on fixing these up at training so we’re good to go for our next game.
‘They’ve shown that they can dig deep when we’re in bad positions they now need to use that determination and put it into the coming games.”