Published at 10:39, Friday, 06 July 2012

There seems to be no stopping Workington Town’s quest for promotion after the high flyers registered a fifth straight win.

Dave Bowden’s team has demolished all-comers since losing to Cumbrian rivals and current league leaders Barrow 54 days ago, and have all but guaranteed promotion to the Championship.

Although not mathematically certain, with just six games and 18 points on offer, Workington are 13 points ahead of fifth place Rochdale.

The title is also in Town’s reach. Sitting just two points behind Barrow, the Raiders must travel to Derwent Park next month in what promises to be a title showdown.

Darren Holt’s men were the last team to enjoy the sweet taste of victory over Martin Oglanby and Gary Charlton’s men when they narrowly beat Town 20-12 at Craven Park.

Since that day in May, Workington have crossed the whitewash 34 times, establishing themselves as one of Championship One’s top teams.

During that period, Elliott Miller scored six times with Brett Carter and Jarrad Stack touching down four times.

Workington’s scoring threat is not restricted to just these three as ex-Super League stars Jamie Thackray, Peter Lupton and Mark Calderwood have also landedg a hat-trick of tries.

In all, 13 players have scored for Workington with Marc Bainbridge and Carl Forber kicking 24 goals between them.

With a healthy points difference of 231, joint coaches Oglanby and Charlton have a 83 per cent win rate with 10 victories from Town’s 12 league matches.

A 30-20 win over Crusaders was the Derwent Park club’s third straight away victory and fifth in six games. The victory also saw Town go unbeaten throughout June.

Charlton acknowledges that Town, despite maintaining their winning sequence, have hit a mid-season blip because of players representing the successful Cumbria Nines team.

He said: “I believe it may have had something to do with the fact that we have been missing players for training through the Nines competition.

“We’ve had players involved with Cumbria and obviously when they are not with us we can’t work on things in training.

“There have also been one or two injuries and generally for the last couple of games we haven’t been our best at all. We have been playing well this season but not recently.

“I can’t fault the players for their efforts and the determination they have been showing but we just haven’t been as smart on the field as we were earlier.”

We have a weekend off coming up and I hope that having all the squad together again for training will produce a different kind of winning performance in our next game at home to South Wales.”

Workington’s next three matches are crucial to determining their season with strugglers South Wales Scorpions and winless Gateshead either side of an away trip to fellow promotion-chasers Doncaster.

Workington’s other remaining fixtures see them host leaders Barrow on August 12 before visiting mid-table Rochdale a week later and finishing at home to Rochdale on September 2.

Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk