Whitehaven hooker James Newton hopes his performance against London Broncos last weekend was good enough to convince head coach James Coyle to keep him in the starting line-up.

Newton has made 25 appearances so far this season but 19 of those have come from the bench.

The Millom-born hooker, now starting in place of the injured Thomas Coyle, scored twice in Haven’s 40-16 win over the Broncos.

And Newton is hopeful that he can keep the momentum going into this weekend’s trip to Dewsbury Rams.

“I’m really enjoying starting,” he said.

“I had a word with James [Coyle] at the start of last week asking if I could start the game and he said ‘yes’.

“No it’s up to me to keep a roll on and keep improving.

“The lads are buzzing at the minute and London Broncos are a full-time team and we absolutely demolished them.

“We need to keep going and make a push for fourth place.”

Haven were 16-0 down after 25 minutes against London before Newton’s first try kick-started the West Cumbrian side’s revival.

“We started a bit flat in the first 20 minutes or so,” he continued.

“We had five or six sets where we couldn’t put anything together.

“We stayed confident and we knew we could get back into the game.

“It’s happened a couple of times this year but we’ve been able to get back into games.

“I made hard work of the first try, to be honest.

“I thought the defender would take the ball off me one on one but I managed to get on it.

“Jessie [Joe Parker] did some great work to get through in the first place.

“The try Ben [Davies] scored just before half-time was massive so we went into the dressing room confident and then we turned it round to show what we could do.”