WHITEHAVEN RL is set to face off against the Swinton Lions in their championship campaign opener. 

The West Cumbrian side will take on Swinton at the Ortus Rec on Sunday, March 17 at 3pm. 

Whitehaven recently lost the Ike Southward Trophy in a local derby against Workington Town. 

Head coach, Jonty Gorley, said: "The frustrating thing was that the lads did what I asked compared to how we'd been in games previously. 

"They maybe put themselves in a bit of a comfort zone when they shouldn't have been as early on it was 16-0. 

"I'd hate to think they took their eye off the ball, up until then there were no penalties or errors. After that, we coughed the ball up after the set when we got to 16-0. 

"They scored on that set when we errored and then we didn't complete another set and they scored again, Joey then got sin-binned, and they got three tries while he was off."

He continued: "After the Widnes game I was thinking about the fitness of our lads because it was pre-season. 

"I'm still happy with the fitness, it's just that when we error, we don't back it up, we don't need to compound it with an error or a restart. 

"I think with the first or second try that Workington got we errored, we restarted, we penalised. 

"It's our own doing, we have to be more disciplined with what we're doing after we error. Preferably we wouldn't error in the first place but if we do, we don't need to compound it. 

"Dion gave a penalty away and Guy Graham gave a great tackle, instead of Dion getting on he just put his hands on the player which is now classed as a flop. This is something we talked about three or four weeks ago.

"I think we've got the square markers in our head, which we are supposed to be doing anyhow."