Thunder keep pressure on play-off rivals

NEWCASTLE Thunder clinched a superb 20-10 win on the road against Doncaster in rugby league’s Kingstone Press League 1 competition yesterday as the Tyneside club took a massive step toward qualifying for the Super 8s.

Having absorbed early pressure, Thunder went within inches of breaking the deadlock before losing the ball forward. However, it was only a temporary reprieve as they forced a knock-on in the shadow of the Dons line.

Dan Parker opened the scoring for Thunder with nice hands from his team-mates shifting the ball from left to right and playing the centre in at the corner.

The advantage was quickly extended thanks to Derrell Olpherts with a typical blockbusting run bursting him through the defence.

With Hardcastle converting, Thunder were into a 0-10 lead. Stoic defence for Thunder and handling errors from the hosts ensured they took nothing for their efforts.

With two minutes to go to halftime, Hardcastle took the opportunity to slot two excellent drop goals.

With a win by 13 points ensuring that they would overhaul York City Knights for fourth place, a kickable penalty was taken early into the second period to give Thunder a 14-point lead.

Scrappiness crept back into the game and Doncaster made territory gains but failed to take advantage.

That was until 15 minutes from time when Thunder’s defence found itself breached for the first time as former player Jason Tali made use of an overlap to find winger Richie Barnett in space for a converted try.

But Newcastle punished a spill of the ball from Tali. Scooping up the loose ball, fullback Lewis Young showed his devastating turn of pace to sprint the length of the field for an opportunist converted try.

Doncaster did prevent Thunder taking the margin they needed to move up into fourth with an 80th-minute converted try.

With only two matches to go until League 1 splits into two groups of eight, Thunder now only need to take one match point from four to secure their qualification.

They will surely be targeting the full haul, making the top four and keeping pace with Whitehaven and Barrow in second and third during the push for play-off qualification and earning of home ties.