Rugby League: Plate dishes up some meagre nourishment

Dave Hadfield sees Lancashire Lynx stay on a dubious new road to Wembley

You could, if you wanted to read a little too much into it, adopt the Lancashire Lynx as a symbol of the attempted transformation of the whole of rugby league.

Last year, they were a modestly improving small town club called Chorley, but they have been enticed up the M6, with the League's active blessing, by the bright lights of Preston.

Despite a hat-trick from Ray Wareing that set up a 19-4 win over Barrow to take them into the last eight of the Silk Cup Plate competition - another bright idea of dubious shelf-life - the pitfalls of the big city were all too obvious at Deepdale yesterday.

A crowd of 300 at Chorley's old home at Victory Park was enough to create a reasonable atmosphere; that many scattered around Preston's one modern stand merely made the mood eerie.

The basis upon which the move was sold was that there would be money available to build a side to match its new setting, but that investment is nowhere to be seen.

Lancashire will not be the worst side in the Second Division when the season proper begins next month, although Barrow, once so strong and ambitious themselves, maybe, but they will attract no new spectators to the code in a town without any rugby league tradition.

There is one corner of Preston North End's club shop devoted to Lynx merchandise, but otherwise their profile is so low as to be horizontal. The name, Lancashire Lynx, summons up no local loyalties, merely raising more questions than in can answer. It is singular or plural? Does it have something to do with golf?

Without recognisable players, there is little point in a move to a bigger stage. Their coach, Kevin Tamati, had a couple of members of the New Zealand side from the Student World Cup lined up and they could have conceivably developed into the sort of personalities upon whom new support can be built, but there was no money to finance the deal.

In making the move without the money to maintain any momentum, it will all, like so much else in rugby league, go off at half-cock.

That is not to say that Preston has not inherited a workmanlike side; Tamati's methodical coaching has seen to that. After a nip-and-tuck first half, in which Wareing's first try gave them a narrow advantage, they took control in the second by showing far better fitness and organisation than their visitors.

It was a shame that Finney did not play yesterday; not Tom Finney, the Preston Plumber, but Milton Finney, the Lancashire centre who was injured.

He will be fit for Wembley, however, which is not quite as hypothetical as it sounds.

Thanks to the Plate, the Lynx are just two games away from a final appearance in May and could just possibly become the first club to play there before anyone in their adopted home town knows who they are.

Lancashire Lynx: Parsley; Wareing, Allday, Stewart, Walsh; Ruane, Emery; Taylor, Smith, Norton, Francis, Molineux, Gee. Substitutes: Westwood, Gleave, Broscoe, Barr.

Barrow: Keane; McMillan, Hutton, Wilson, Green; Atkinson, Slater; Schubert, Shaw, Spencley, Luxon, Kerr, Carter. Substitutes: Wilkes, John, Caunt, Howarth.

Referee: S Cross (Hull).

A penalty by Ben Lythe in the final minute of extra time put Widnes into the last eight of the Plate at the expense of York who had drawn level 13 minutes from time thanks to a try by Damian Bell.