Rugby League: Inspired Josh Charnley steals show for Warrington

Josh Charnley scored four tries as the eight-time Challenge Cup winners, Warrington, sauntered into round six of this year’s competition courtesy of this merciless victory over League 1 side Bradford. With six victories in succession heading into this fixture, Steve Price’s outfit are the form side in Super League – and there was never any real danger of them failing to make it seven on the bounce here against their lower-league opponents.

In all, there were 10 home tries, as the Wolves continued to show clear signs under Price of a side who look capable of competing for silverware once again in 2018. Charnley in particular has taken little time in readjusting to life as a rugby league player following his departure from Sale; he now has seven tries in the five games he has played for Warrington since joining the club.

For Bradford, this was an afternoon which perhaps best underlined the size of the task the four-time Super League champions face to reach the top flight once again. Relegated twice in just over five years to the sport’s lowest professional tier, the Bulls arrived here in hope, rather than expectation.

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By the end, this was a difficult afternoon throughout for Bradford, whose coach, John Kear, masterminded the greatest cup upset of all: Sheffield’s 1998 victory against the all-conquering Wigan Warriors. There would be no repeat here, however – that was made clear as early as half-time, by which point Warrington had moved into an unassailable 30-point lead.

Bradford had begun the better of the two sides, but they were unable to take advantage of an early spell of pressure on the Warrington line, and the hosts quickly made them pay with three tries in a 10-minute period where the visitors failed to touch the ball once. After their captain, Chris Hill, broke the deadlock, Warrington’s half-back pairing of Tyrone Roberts and Declan Patton began to find more and more space with which to torment the Bradford defenders, leading to tries for Ben Currie and Bryson Goodwin.

Currie’s second followed four minutes later, with Roberts in particular proving to be a threat to the Bradford defence who were quickly wilting in the spring sunshine. Charnley’s first then arrived as quick hands set the winger free in the corner. To their credit, Bradford then did a fine job of preventing further Warrington points.

That lasted until a minute before half-time, when Charnley again benefitted from superb play from Roberts and Patton to score his second unchallenged in the corner, with Stefan Ratchford’s three goals in addition during the course of the half making it 30-0 at the break.

From there, it was clear there would be no way back for Bradford and, mercilessly, Warrington would not ease up after the restart, scoring four more tries to compound the visitors’ woes. Two of those went to Charnley, who continued his trend of scoring walk-in tries following fine work in the build-up to free the winger time and time again.

Goodwin also scored twice to complete his own personal hat-trick but, in a moment that epitomised the effort and endeavour from the visitors until the very end, Bradford at least gave their impressive travelling support of more than 2,000 fans something to cheer when Joe Keyes stepped over to ensure that Bradford at least had the final say. By then, though, the job had long since been done by the hosts.