Morley 64 Keighley 12

Morley earned a 64-12 victory over Keighley in their final home game and then found out that play-off rivals Cleckheaton and Wheatley Hills both lost, while Sheffield were held to a draw.
The results have left Dave Murray’s Maroons with a seven point lead over Cleckheaton and Wheatley Hills, with two games to play, and an eight point lead over Sheffield, who have a game in hand. But interestingly Morley’s last two games are away to Wheatley Hills and Sheffield, and Sheffield have also to face Champions Beverley.
At the start of the game Morley fell behind to an Alex Brown penalty but hit back when Luke Stevenson broke before Tom Clough and Nick Coupland linked to feed Simon Bradshaw, who went down the left wing, chipped the ball over two covering defenders and beat them in the race to touch the ball down over the line to score, and then he added the touchline conversion.
Morley then had Sean Dadswell sin-binned for an offence in the ruck, but it was while down to 14 men that the Maroons scored again, when Mark Chester’s cross field kick bounced nicely for Karl Bradshaw to collect and score behind the posts giving brother Simon a simple kick to add the conversion.
For Keighley Brown missed two penalty chances before slotting over his fourth attempt to keep Keighley in contact at 14-6. As soon as Morley were back to 15 men, they were again reduced to 14 when Paul Gabrial was sin-binned for stamping, Brown added a third goal for Keighley only to see Simon Bradshaw pop another penalty over at the other end when Keighley were caught off-side and the half finished with the Maroons in front 17-9.
No.8 Tom Clough extended the home lead 9 minutes into the second half when he stormed through a tackle and placed the ball over the chalk mark, Simon Bradshaw again was given an easy conversion attempt.
Soon after Brown added his fourth penalty for Keighley, but from then on it was all one way traffic as Morley took control. Clough added a second try, Bradshaw converted. Straight from the restart a fantastic set of interpassing saw Coupland released on the left wing to pop over and score in the corner and Bradshaw had a rare miss with his conversion attempt.
Bradshaw soon made up for the miss by adding three tries in eight minutes all of which he converted to finish with a personal haul of 39 points. Tom Amiral-Moody and Stevenson combined to create the first, before Bradshaw outpaced his opposing number to score in the corner for his hat-trick and he added his fourth with an interception from half way.
Morley’s final and ninth try came in the last minute with Karl Bradshaw this time out pacing the covering defence and giving sibling Simon another simple kick to round off a very satisfactory day.