St Albans Centurions suffered a 42-20 home defeat to Warrington Wizards at Toulmin Drive on Saturday.

Second-placed Warrington were rocked early on by the speed and power of St Albans. After eight minutes, Cents centre Mike Benson ran in a try from out wide.

Within three minutes of the restart, a superb long pass from player coach Shane Rampling went out wide to winger Keiron O’Shea, who outpaced the Wizards defence to run in a second try, which was converted by Lewis Dempsey.

Less than five minutes later, the Cents were on the scoreboard again when a high kick to the corner saw Nick Woolley leap the highest and cross the line for St Albans’ third try. 

Warrington are a semi-pro side with ex-Wigan and Oldham players in their ranks, and their experience began to show as they dragged themselves back into the game and ran in two converted tries after 25 minutes.

When a kick was knocked on, Rampling got the ball from the resultant scrum and powered his way over to score the  Cents’ fourth try which Dempsey converted.

In the last five minutes of the half, Warrington managed to run in two tries against a Cents team that was beginning to show a bit of tiredness from playing the first half at such a furious pace.

The second period did not go anywhere near as well for the Cents as the opening period did. Captain Andy Lake left the pitch suffering from concussion and several players kept the Cents physio busy with injuries and cuts.

Warrington scored two more tries in the first ten minutes, but then for almost the rest of the game it was open running rugby, interspersed with handling errors caused by the wet conditions.

With the score at 32-20 and seven minutes left, it looked like the home team  were going to get a bonus point. However, the visitors ran in two more tries against a tiring Centurions outfit in the closing moments of the game.

Team manager Tony Bottomley said: “What a difference a week makes. Last week we had seven players missing and were well beaten by league leaders Hemel Stags.

“This week three of those players have returned and we upped our game. We dominated the first half against the second-placed team in the league, but unfortunately we could not keep that momentum up all game, and they took the second half. We still have work to do, but are getting there.”

The Centurions are at home against Bramley Buffaloes this weekend.