St Helens second-row Jon Vaughan and the Warrington Wolves wing Jake Thewlis each scored two tries as Lancashire took a 1-0 lead in the 2023 Academy Origin series with an impressive team performance in Castleford.
With their matchday 17 comprising eight Saints, four Wolves and five Wigan Warriors, the visitors ran in four tries in each half.
Lancashire surged to a 22-0 lead inside 25 minutes, with the St Helens pair of Vaughan and Noah Stephens setting the tone.
Stephens, a strong-running prop who has also excelled in schoolboy rugby union with St Mary’s in Crosby, burst through to send Vaughan over, with another Saint, the scrum half Will Roberts, adding a simple conversion.
The St Helens dominance continued as Dayon Sambou crossed on the right, following in the foosteps of his elder brother Jumah who made a try-scoring senior debut for Saints on the same Castleford ground last season.
This time Roberts was unable to convert but he made amends 10 minutes later by curling over an excellent goal after players from Wigan and Warrington had got in on the act, with Thewlis crossing from the Warriors stand-off Jack Farrimond’s lovely long pass.
Ryan Brown, another Wigan player who had combined effectively with Stephens to establish Lancashire’s forward supremacy, then surged over from close range.
It was a third Wigan player who finally put Yorkshire on the board in the 32ndminute as Maddox Jeffery, a wing who they signed from the Featherstone Lions community club, showed impressive power to cross on the left.
But Lancashire reasserted their dominance at the start of the second half as Ciaran Nolan, another Saints youngster who had come off the interchange bench, sent Vaughan over for his second try.
Yorkshire replied with their second try, as the Huddersfield second-row Max Merta rose highest to collect a kick from the Warrington full-back Noah Booth, and the Hull FC half-back Sullivan Medforth added an excellent conversion.
But Lancashire were again quick to kill off any thoughts of a White Rose fightback, as the Wigan centre Nathan Lowe charged over, and although the Wakefield Trinity centre Oliver Pratt scored a third Yorkshire try from Medforth’s sharp dummy half pass, it was again cancelled out as Lowe’s pass allowed the St Helens wing Owen Dagnall to cross on the right.
Huddersfield centre Jack Hudson, the son of the former England forward Ryan who was watching in the stand, appeared to have completed the scoring when he rounded off a good handling move in stoppage time, with Medforth again goaling from wide out.
But even then there was time for Lancashire to have the last word as Thewlis touched down a precise Farrimond kick.
Yorkshire now have four weeks to plot their revenge in the second match of the series at Sewell Group Craven Park on May 27, before it concludes at the Totally Wicked Stadium on August 18 – with the RFL’s Head of Pathways Paul Anderson set to select an England Academy side for their first international since 2019 against France in June.
Academy Origin Match 1
Yorkshire 20 Lancashire 42
Mend-a-Hose Jungle, Castleford
Yorkshire: Tries - Jeffery, Merta, Pratt, Hudson; Goals – Medforth 2.
Lancashire: Tries – Vaughan 2, Sambou, Thewlis 2, Brown, Lowe, Dagnall; Goals – Roberts 5.
Image Credit: Simon Hall
