DEFIANT Cornwall RLFC head coach Mike Abbott refused to concede that his side’s slim hopes of making the play-offs were over after they were defeated 34-16 by Workington Town at the Memorial Ground on Sunday, writes Gareth Davies.

Consecutive wins over London Skolars and Midlands Hurricanes, in the Choughs’ previous two games, had raised hopes of a late charge to the end-of-season shake-up but this latest reverse leaves the side four points adrift of sixth-placed North Wales Crusaders.

The two teams meet on Sunday and crucially, Cornwall have a game in hand on Carl Foster’s nomadic outfit.

However, with seventh- placed Rochdale just two points behind North Wales and with a game in hand on both Cornwall and Crusaders, Abbott’s troops are still alive but only just and realistically, need to win all their remaining matches to make the top six. 

“Going forward, we are not writing this season off by any stretch,” Abbott told cornwallrlfc.co.uk. “We will go into our last four games at 100 miles an hour to get results because that is where we are at as a team now. The performances we put in warrant results against the other teams in this division.”

Commenting on the defeat by Workington, Abbott added: “I thought that neither team ever got into their stride and although Workington go away with the win, if either side had used some initiative to build pressure, they would have kicked on.

“The score went from 10-4 to 20-4 in the blink of an eye but we were still confident at half-time. We spoke about playing a bit quicker and being smarter in attack with more endeavour.

“Our start in the second half showed that we did all those things with the try coming from a little kick. We knew Workington were a tough side defensively and they don’t concede many points so we had to be creative and do something a little bit different.”