DELIGHTED boss Karl Harrison lifted the Northern Rail Cup and then hailed his Halifax team as “very brave”.
Halifax pulled off a superb 21-12 Northern Rail Cup Final victory over Featherstone at Blackpool – revenge for their home June League defeat.
“I thought it was a very brave performance by the team,” said Harrison.
“They put us under all sorts of pressure and we stood up and defended our line magnificently.
“I though we probably spooked them a little bit by leaving (Sean) Penkywicz out of the starting line-up, and then taking a short kick-off changed the flow of the game from minute one.
“I think we just edged it in the end.”
Rovers coach Powell said: “Credit to Halifax, but I do feel that there are some pretty poor agendas about at the minute and I’d like to get to the bottom of them.
“There’s some refereeing stuff that’s just garbage. We’re just getting absolutely peppered every week and I think we got one penalty in the second half.
“Karl Harrison has been going on since the last time we played them about the ruck, and probably got what he wanted here.
“He who speaks the loudest gets what he wants, and that’s disappointing.
“I think referees at this level are very, very poor, and until you get a grip of that there are always going to be people like me talking about it.
“But I wouldn’t look anywhere apart from ourselves, to be honest.
“We needed to be better and come up with our best performance, but Halifax were just a bit too good for us.
“Halifax can have their day, we have to lick our wounds.”
Full report Pages 32 & 33.
