Featherstone Rovers' resilience to deal with big travel delay earns praise

​Traffic problems because of an accident on the M6 made Rovers’ long travel to Cumbria even longer and led to a delay of more than an hour to the scheduled kick-off.

But despite this Featherstone produced a professional performance, benefited from a good start and went on to record a 60-0 win that keeps them eight points clear at the top of the Betfred Championship.

"I acknowledge the efforts of both sets of players to deal with that adversity and wait on top of the travel,” said director Ford.

"I think we showed a lot of resilience. It’s hats off to the supporters as well. Obviously they came a long way, got behind us and hopefully they enjoyed the journey back.”

Ford was full of praise for the performance individually and collectively that brought 11 tries with eight different scorers.

He added: “We were really good, Sean should be really proud and I’m certainly really proud of what the boys have produced.

"I thought we looked really physical, we took some good short sides on and kicked the ball a little bit better.

"We put a load of our energy in D as well and there is certainly lots of promise about this team.”

Sean Long did not include last week’s signing, Dane Chisholm straight into the team, but there was a debut for young half-back Logan Astley from the interchange bench.

Key forward Elijah Taylor, meanwhile, made his long awaited return from injury and will now be hoping to stay fit for the run-in with some big games still to come for Featherstone in their bid for Super League status.

Taylor underwent laser surgery on his eye, but was cleared to play at Whitehaven and enjoyed his first visit to the area in a winning team.

Head coach Long is delighted to have ‘ET’ back and now has a stronger squad to work with and selection decisions to make each week, although he could have lost one of his other big players in centre Chris Hankinson, who had to go off with a knee injury that will be assessed this week ahead of the home game with Swinton.