Wigan St Cuthberts 28

West Sutton 30

(after extra time) WEST Sutton produced a storming fightback to win this North Counties Challenge Cup fourth round tie after extra time.

St Cuthberts started off strongly and raced into a 14-0 lead with three well-taken tries.

But just before the break, West Sutton hit back when loose-forward Gary Hammon gathered a cross-kick by winger John Harding to score by the posts with Ste Barr converting to make it 14-6.

It was Sutton's turn to make a whirlwind start after the break when Willie Johnson regathered his own kick ahead to score, then Martin Leyland went over from a play-the-ball. With Barr adding both goals West Sutton took the lead for the first time at 18-14.

A second try by Hammon, again goalled by Barr, made it 24-14, but things began to go wrong for Sutton when they had two men sin-binned. St Cuthberts took advantage to grab two tries and a goal to take the match into extra time.

The Wiganers regained the lead in the first period of extra time with an unconverted try, but West Sutton grabbed the decisive score when Andy Wilburn sent prop Craig Simm powering in. Greg Stubbs added the vital conversion, and although they had a couple of scares West Sutton held on to win.

The Reprise man-of-the-match award for West Sutton went to Sean McNamara, with Willie Johnson, Craig Simm, Karl Grounds and Jay McCabe all worthy of mention.

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