Whitehaven head coach James Coyle praised his side’s mental toughness after their superb 40-16 win against London Broncos.

Coyle’s side trailed 16-0 after 25 minutes but hit back to score 40 unanswered points and record their first win of the Super 8s.

Haven scored twice just before half-time through James Newton and Ben Davies and then picked up a further five tries in the second half.

The West Cumbrians had the lion’s share of possession in the first 15 minutes of the game but were unable to turn their field position into points.

When London then managed to make their way into Haven’s half, they put daylight between the two sides and went 16-0 up.

“We built a lot of pressure but we weren’t clinical enough in the first 20 minutes,” Coyle said.

“We were building pressure and asking questions and making them work hard. They defended well and put us under pressure. We had some good opportunities to finish tries but we didn’t do that.

“The disappointing thing is when we were asked to defend we failed to do it.

“That mentality isn’t good enough and the mental toughness of the players was questioned at half-time.

“We said we didn’t want a similar thing to last week against Featherstone because there’s no excuse for being out-enthused.”

Newton and Davies both scored from short-range in the first half with Davies’s try coming just before the half-time hooter.

“We did say on the sidelines to go for the two points but I don’t think that try would have made a difference,” Coyle added.

“The two tries we pinched made half-time easier for us but we collectively agreed we hadn’t played that well.”

Coyle reserved praise for Richie Beaumont who committed his future to Haven last week and then captained the side on Saturday evening.

“Our middles were massive for us,” Coyle added. “Richie was great, he stepped up as a leader in place of Macca [Scott McAvoy] and Dave Allen and did 60 minutes without a rest and that took some doing against a big pack like London’s.”