It took a Lachlan Walmsley hat-trick to claim victory for Wakefield Trinity over their local rivals, Featherstone Rovers in the Betfred Championship.

Trinity were able to avenge their Challenge Cup defeat at the Millennium Stadium with a fantastic 20-12 win thanks to tries from their Scottish winger.

The game also saw a debut for Wakefield’s new signing Ky Rodwell with the Australian having joined recently from NRL side Parramatta Eels.

Wakefield struck first in the game after 10 minutes with Luke Gale opting to run the ball on the last play and link up with fullback Max Jowitt to create space for Walmsley out wide before the winger acrobatically finished evading the challenge of Rovers fullback Caleb Aekins.

Just a couple of minutes later it was a carbon copy. Gale and Jowitt combined to send Walmsley flying over in the corner. Jowitt, tasked with two tricky touchline conversions, nailed both to make the score 12-0.

Featherstone responded half way through the first 40. Wakefield’s defence switched off at a tap restart allowing Josh Hardcastle to break the line and find Danny Addy in support.

Jowitt completed the scoring in the first half with a penalty goal to push Trinity 14-6 ahead at the break.

The rain started to tumble as the second half kicked off making it tricky for both sides to put together any fancy attacking plays.

After almost touching down just seconds before, an error from the resulting 20 metre restart gave Featherstone the chance to close the gap on the scoreboard. From the base of the scrum Aekins managed to skip past two Trinity defenders to slide over. Louix Gorman nailed the conversion to pull the hosts within two points.

Ill discipline saw Brad England end up in the sin bin giving Jowitt the chance to add another penalty goal but Wakefield failed to add any more points while Rovers were down to 12-men. 

After just getting back to a full complement it was the turn of Josh Hardcastle to be sin binned. 

With minutes remaining on the clock, Walmsley completed his hat-trick to spark celebrations on the field and in the stands and complete the victory for Wakefield. 

Wakefield Trinity: Jowitt, Olpherts, Thornley, Pratt, Walmsley, Gale, Lino, Bowden, Hood, Atoni, Ashurst, Vagana, Pitts

Wakefield Subs: Uele, Rodwell, Doyle, Croft

Wakefield Tries: Walmsley (3)

Wakefield Conversions: Jowitt (4/5) 

Featherstone Rovers: Aekins, Wacokecoke, Gorman, Minikin, Gale, Bowes, Turner, Springer, Jones, Kamano, Hardcastle, England, Addy

Featherstone Subs: Wynne, Albert, Fishwick, Tomlinson

Featherstone Tries: Addy, Aekins

Featherstone Conversions: Gorman (2/2)

Featherstone Yellow Cards: England, Hardcastle