Bradford & Bingley 49

Percy Park 19

For someone who only came into the side as a stand-in for Bradford and Bingley's pre-season warm-up game against Old Brodleians, winger Asa Firth is having a cracking season.

The 23-year-old, who notched his first hat-trick of tries on Saturday as the Bees went two points clear of Driffield in Thwaites North Division Two, has been an ever-present this campaign.

And the former Salford University student has now scored nine tries in 18 appearances to become the first team's leading try-scorer, edging ahead of skipper Richard Petyt and left winger Jeremy Marr, who are both on eight.

"I only played second or third team last season, coming home every other weekend," said the son of Bingley stalwart Gary Firth.

"I am a fly half really, but the first team were one short for the match against Old Brodleians, and I stepped in on the wing and have played there ever since."

The leisure management student added: "As we haven't got such a strong pack, we tend to rely on the backs so you get a fair number of chances, but as a team we only tend to play in spells of 20 minutes or 40 minutes. We don't concentrate for 80 minutes.

"We still have to play the six teams who are immediately below us in the table, and if we can win four or five of them, we should be okay for promotion.

"Next Saturday we have an important home game against Blackburn, and if we beat them we have a good chance of not only going up, but winning the championship, because that is what we really want."

For the second successive league Saturday, the other results went Bradford and Bingley's way.

The thumping victory over Alnwick on Dec-ember 19, when Driffield lost at Morpeth, put the Bees back on top of the table on points difference. And Driffield lost at home to Vale of Lune on Saturday..

Also handy were the defeats for West Park Bramhope (at Chester) and Morpeth (at Aln-wick).

Percy Park contributed to their own downfall in the first half, a suicidal long pass in front of their own posts allowing Bees scrum half Peter Watts to catch a ricochet and steal in for a gift try.

Watts had scored another try earlier in the half and Firth had bagged the first of his treble, centre Matthew Inman adding a penalty and two conversions.

Plucky Percy Park, who only travelled with one replacement, managed a try by Paul Jobson, and added two more in the second -a pushover try by former Keighley scrum half Kevin Bottomley and a solo effort by fly half Mark Baskerville, centre Andy McNab adding two conversions.

Bradford and Bingley added four more tries after the oranges through Firth (2), Jeremy Marr and Petyt, Inman tagging on a penalty and two more conversions.

BILL MARSHALL

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.