Alex Chatterton celebrated his 100th Underbank Rangers appearance by grabbing a second-half hat trick in his side’s impressive 52-4 home National Conference League Second Division victory over Askam.

The manner of the triumph was the perfect response to an indifferent run of form for Bank, with the 10-try walloping making it three wins from the opening six games to move them up to fifth in the table.

Luke Pogson and Neil Barrett came into the starting line-up for the injured Chris Druett and James Usher, Paul Horsfall stepped into the hooking role for the unavailable Stephen Berry and injured Andy Boothroyd, and Johnathan Tinker, Dave Valentine and former Giants favourite and Rangers assistant coach Paul Reilly all made their season debuts.

Underbank started the game with real purpose and drive, and opened the scoring after just six minutes when Barrett and Chatterton combined to send Courtney Allette racing to the line.

The lead was doubled just three minutes later as Tinker collected a Joel Croker kick to score his first try for the club. Croker added the first of his six conversions on the day.

Underbank had to wait until the 25th minute for the next score as skipper Kris Harrop brushed off three would-be tackles on a bustling run and just managed to wriggle his arms free to plant the ball down for a great score.

To their credit, Askam dug in and hit back with their only try of the game, but the final word of the an almost perfect first half from the home side went to Bengal Spice man-of-the-match Mitch Turner as he bust through the defensive line from 30m out, after running a great line, and then beautifully stepped the visiting full-back for a crowd-rousing score. Croker converted and Underbank led 20-4 at half-time.

With Turner, Craig Williams, Luke Nelmes and Luke Karolczuk all in rampant form Askam were unable to turn the tide in the second half as Bank continued to dominate, with Chatterton scoring an outstanding 13-minute treble.

Firstly, good footwork saw him step through the Askam defence to score, then great staying pace as he caught an Askam kick at his own 10m line and raced 90m unopposed and then finally he went through a huge

gap after receiving a perfect drop-off from Harrop to complete his second successive hat trick.

Three Croker conversions took the score to 38-4 and that was that as a contest.

All that was left was for Underbank to produce some sparkling attacking play in the final quarter as Barrett, Liam Donlon and Allette all crossed for scores to round off a top triumph to leave Underbank head coach Richard Knight delighted,

“We haven’t played that well all year, and if we play that well again this year I’ll be really chuffed,” he said.

“I can’t find fault with the boys at all. The completion rate was over 80%, we only missed seven tackles all game compared to the 40 that we gave away last week and only gave away three penalties compared to the 12 we gave away last week.

“So all round a much-improved performance. We trained well the last two weeks, but we didn’t see that last week, but we did on this occasion.”