Photo Gallery: ‘Relief’ as Batley Bulldogs gain precious win over Whitehaven to rekindle play-off hopes

Two tries apiece for Jimmy Meadows and Dale Morton helped the Bulldogs to a 25-12 triumph to leap back above Widnes Vikings, who lost heavily at fellow promotion hopefuls London Broncos, and Halifax Panthers, who beat second-placed Toulouse on Saturday evening, into the final play-off spot.

Meadows got the game’s first try when he easily danced his way through the Whitehaven defence, with Morton adding the extras.

The game’s crucial moment, as Lingard would later refer to, was Meadows’ second of the afternoon right before the half-time hooter after he dived onto a great Nyle Flynn kick. Again, Morton made no mistake with the conversion.

That try “took the wind out of” Whitehaven, acknowledged Batley’s head coach and so it proved as Morton leapt highest to grab a high kick to touch down on the right hand side before converting his own try.

The two try scorers then combined as Meadows showed excellent vision and skill to pick out Morton with a long pass and the winger did the rest for his second of the afternoon.

At 24-0 the game seemed out of sight but Whitehaven are still fighting for their Championship lives at the bottom end of the table and got on the try sheet through Dave Ecclestone for his eighth try of the season.

However, Josh Woods made it a four-score game again when he nailed a drop goal to make it 25-6. Dion Aye then went over for a consolation try for the struggling visitors as the Bulldogs celebrated getting their play-off push back on track with a first league victory since Sunday, July 9.

After the game, Lingard said: “There was a bit of relief that we had finally got that victory on the board after so long. Hopefully it is now going to take us into the last two games with a little bit more confidence.

“We managed the game pretty well, although we were a little bit reserved at times which tends to happen when you are lacking a little bit of confidence. I thought we could have pulled the trigger a few more times than what we did and test them a bit more on their edges.

“But the try on half-time gave us a bit of confidence and maybe took the wind out of their sails going into the second half. We managed the game really well in that second half in terms of completion, ending our sets and defending tough as well.”

Asked how important the win was in terms of the context of the season, Lingard responded:

“Particularly after Halifax won on Saturday against Toulouse it was a massive win for us. We need to win every game now to get into the play-offs. Had we lost it would have made it extremely difficult for us.”

Here are a selection of photos from Sunday’s game taken by Paul Butterfield.