'He is on fire’ - Sean Long praises hat-trick hero Gareth Gale as Featherstone romp to win over York

Two of Gale’s treble came in a wonderful burst of four tries in the space of eleven minutes at the start of the second half as Featherstone roared into a 34-0 lead.

His third try of the afternoon, after James Glover had got York on the scoreboard, was his 11th of an immensely productive campaign so far.

Long said of his performance:

“He is on fire. It’s not just the tries - that is what you see. His all round game in defence, jamming and making the right reads. He must have carried for over 200 metres.

“To do that, score three tries and come up with some try-saving tackles at the end, he gets all the plaudits from me. He was outstanding.”

Despite running in eight tries in total, Fev had to be patient before eventually breaking through the Knights’ armour after the visitors went set-for-set in the early stages.

Long said: “That’s what happens when you go set-for-set against a team like York. They wanted to do that as well and it’s like a stalemate and you’re kind of playing chess a little bit.

“You’re basically waiting for who breaks first. We had four defensive sets on our try line, defended that and went up to the other end and scored. We felt like we broke them first.

“But then you have got to do it all over again and again. You want to get the rewards of playing like that. We had to wear them down, wear them down and wear them down and then you can play rugby.

“You might only enjoy the last fifteen minutes of a game. The hard work is the first 65 minutes. You do the hard work first and then you get to enjoy the last fifteen.

“At half-time I said let’s reset; we’re in the lead at the moment, but it’s 0-0, so let’s start playing set-for-set again and let’s see who cracks first.

“Obviously they cracked first and we got a bit of a roll on then; running downhill, everyone got a bit more energy and we ended up posting a few tries.”

The contest was Fev’s first game back at the Millennium Stadium since the surprising defeat at the hands of Halifax Panthers in the Challenge Cup.

And Long has said that everyone has been “chipping in” to ensure the unbeaten league run has continued.

He said: “We had quite a lot of injuries against Halifax the last time we played here but it was still no excuse as the team that went out should have put in a better performance.

“Again, we are still down to the bare bones. We have got Elijah Taylor playing at half-backs and we only had 19 men fit in the squad but they are all chipping in.

“We have been a bit scratchy the past couple of weeks so we stripped it right back with our attack and focused on our D and said let’s earn the right to play and then the attack will come off the back of our defence because they’re really good.

“I think we’re averaging only six points per game defensively which is good. Even right at the end when they made the break there were lads scrambling from everywhere to just stop them from scoring. They could have let them score but they didn’t. They worked hard for one another.”

On Mathieus Cozza who scored his first try of the season, Long said:

“His dad was here today and I was chatting to him before the game. It was good for him to get a try in front of his parents and his family. I told his dad that he can come again next week”!