A day to forget for the Bears

Keighley Cougars 98 Coventry Bears 6

On a day when anything that could go wrong did just that, Coventry Bears crashed to a heavy defeat against a very good Keighley side.

It was a beautiful sunny day in West Yorkshire as the home team scored first courtesy of Benn Hardcastle, with a conversion following.

It all seemed to be going to plan for the Bears as Rhys Gant pulled a try back and Ben Stead’s kick levelled the scores at six apiece.

But then the onslaught resumed as Matthew Bailey crossed over with a quarter of an hour gone. And that was it as the Cougars ran in five more tries to go into the half time interval with an unsurmountable 42-6 lead.

At which point it seemed things could not get worse, but the second half was as bleak and unforgiving as the nearby setting of Wuthering Heights as the home side scored a whole procession of tries, with the Bears unable to find any meaningful reply.

And so it ended with Keighley’s score mercifully falling short of a hundred but still it was the Bears biggest ever defeat.

Perhaps it was a hangover from the two big away games at Bradford and at Superleague Widnes, or  even an aftershock from the previous week’s home game which slipped away from them at the end, or maybe this side isn’t yet a fully gelled team.

Whatever the reason, there was plenty of soul-searching on the way back and now the task is to regroup, rebuild  and put in good performance in the next two games back at Butts Park.