Widness Vikings 36 Dewsbury Rams 22: Dewsbury battle but are unable to recover fully from bad start

Three tries in the opening 13 minutes left the Rams up against it. Stand-off Grant Gore was first across the whitewash as he backed up Simon Finnigan’s break. Centre Stephen Tyrer rumbled over from close range shortly after and Ben Kavanagh danced through to make it 18-0.

The Rams managed to stem the flow and their pressure on the home line was rewarded when Austin Buchanan sneaked over past some lacklustre blindside defence.

Dominic Brambani converted superbly from the blindside but the good work was undone on 34 minutes when Tyrer romped 60 metres to score from Shane Grady’s offload.

With just seconds remaining in the first half Richard Chapman kept Dewsbury in the hunt as he burrowed his way to the line to make it 24-10 with Brambani surprsingly missing an eminently kickable conversion.

Buchanan prevented a certain six-pointer shortly after the restart with an ankle-tap on Vikings full-back Danny Hulme but he could do nothing to prevent Kevin Penny from stretching over for Widnes’s fifth try of the afternoon.

The Rams’ cause was not helped when prop Anthony England was sin-binned for a late hit on Gore and from the resultant tap Kavanagh waltzed through for his second converted score of the day to make it 36-10.

With England still cooling his heels, Chapman forced his way over from dummy-half to complete a personal try double with Brambani adding the extras.

When Brambani latched onto a grubber kick into the Vikings’ in-goal area, the Rams still had a sniff at 36-22.

The dramatic comeback never quite materialised, however, with neither side registering in the last 15 minutes of the contest.

Widnes Vikings: Hulme; Flynn, Gardner, Tyrer, Penny; Gore, Coyle; Kavanagh, Tomkins, Crosby, Leuluai, Finnigan, Haggerty. Substitutes: Varkulis, Allen, Grady, Sculthorpe.

Dewsbury Rams: Craven; Wainwright, Faal, Turner, Buchanan; Barthau, Brambani; England, Blake, Hirst, Fletcher, Lockwood, Cosgrove. Substitutes: Menzies, Smith, Chapman, Nicholson.

Referee: T Roby.