Swinton Lions 6 Batley Bulldogs 38: Craig Lingard hails Batley's resilience as they take step closer to Championship play-offs

The Bulldogs fell behind when Luis Roberts crossed for the hosts but that would prove the only time Swinton breached the visiting defence as Batley responded with seven unanswered tries to edge closer to guaranteeing a play-off place.

Alistair Leak’s hat-trick, along with two tries from Johnny Campbell and one each for Greg Johnson and George Senior saw Batley maintain a healthy gap from seventh-placed Whitehaven with just a handful of fixtures left to play.

“It is a bit of a double-edged sword. It is pleasing that we don’t panic when we do go behind but it is a bit frustrating that we are having to show that resilience,” reflected Lingard.

“We didn’t start well, we knew they would be full of confidence.

“We have shown in the past that we can come back from a deficit but it would be nice to not have to do that.”

He continued: “I was really pleased with the performance, particularly with the second half. We were a bit scratchy in the first half, our completion was pretty poor.

“In the first 20 minutes, Swinton had a lot of possession and we did a lot of defending on our own goalline.

“We managed to get the try on the stroke of half time which helped us going into half time. We scored in the first couple of minutes of the second half as well just to shake them off a bit.”