Taylor treble helps buoyant Sheffield

LEWIS Taylor scored a hat-trick as Sheffield continued their push for the second-placed play-off spot with a 52-0 whitewash against Paviors.

A relentless performance started in the second minute when Ianto Jones crossed, before Robert Fawdry, Taylor and Matthew Adcock tries wrapped up the bonus points before half-time.

Taylor completed his hat-trick with a second half brace while Jason Hignell, Christian Hooper, Callum Posa and Thomas Marples added further tries.

Sheffield are in second five points behind Syston who won 29-10 at Doncaster Phoenix despite playing with 14 men for the last hour.

Alex Cavner, Sam Harrison, Joel James and Andy Jones all crossed the whitewash while Fin Nockles kicked three conversions and a penalty.

Runaway leaders Newport (Salop) are 11 points clear with five games to play after recording their 19th win from 21 matches 39-24 at Bromsgrove.

George Castledine led the way with a brace of tries for the Shropshire visitors while Nemani Rayabo, Jake Leonard, Tom Cowell and Sam Evans added further tries.

Nuneaton took advantage of defeats to their relegation rivals to move four points clear of the bottom three after a 32-13 win at home to Broadstreet.

In a mid-table battle Burton ran out 29-20 winners over Dudley Kingswinford despite tries from James Ryan and Ben Rhodes for the visitors.

An end-to-end encounter high-scoring encounter resulted in Scunthorpe running out 36-25 winners over Sandbach.

Jack Leach opened the scoring for the visitors only to see Marcus Payne reply for Scunthorpe.

After the interval Scunthorpe went ahead through Ben Hyde only for James Preston to draw the visitors level once again.

However, the hosts then took control with Ollie Cole scoring a brace of tries and James McKay the other to set up the victory, although Sandbach did reply through John Whittaker.