WHITEHAVEN RL saw success in their opening game of the season. 

The West Cumbrian side defeated Swinton Lions 18-16 at the Ortus Rec. 

Head coach Jonty Gorley shared his thoughts on the game. He said: "I said since I knew Swinton was going to be our first game that they'd be a hard team to break down and beat. 

"When we went 14-0 down, we showed a lot of character to get over the line at 18-16. We needed that after the last couple of games, I thought that the conditions weren't great but one part of me thought that was good because we needed that tough battle in the middle to prove that we could do it.

"Fair play to them they worked hard, we weren't great discipline-wise and that first 20 minutes gave them a lot more field position than we wanted to give. 

"Because other than that we weren't getting much out of that half an hour and the way that Swinton was coming off the line was good.

"Just penalties and restarts gave them a bit of a leg up so that gave them the field position to get the tries. 

"But after that in the last 15 minutes of the first half and most of the second half, I thought we were in control of that game.

"We did work hard and that's just effort areas, I thought Owen McCarron again showed what effort areas are by chasing kicks down and all those little effort areas. 

"Dalton came on and worked hard from a marker, we got an error out of Swinton from just him working hard. 

"That's what we said before the game, the team who makes the least errors and works the hardest will probably come out with the win and I feel that we did well enough to get that.

"Our skill levels the last couple of games haven't been great, so I'm happy with how we were especially with the conditions I was expecting a lot more. 

"We trained on there on Tuesday night, it was similar conditions, and it was raining so I'm just glad that something in training is going onto the pitch at the moment."