Workington Town boss Phil Veivers admitted they came very close to upsetting Batley after another improved performance yesterday.

Town lost out by just seven points to John Kear’s side at the Zebra Claims Stadium and Veivers admitted Workington could have come away with the points if it were not for a couple of individual errors.

But he was pleased that they continued to show improvement and passion across the park, despite the 31-24 loss.

“We played well in patches,” said Veivers. “Early in the game we got ourselves into the lead and we drifted away from what we were doing.

“We wanted to grind their team down a little bit. We knew what they were going to do, come through the forwards.

“Then we came up with two yardage errors and from those two errors they came up with a penalty and scored a try off the back of another.

“But we had a lot of passion out there. We are in a good place at the moment we’ve got a lot of confidence in the way we are playing.

“Even when we went two scores down in the second half we did enough to get back in and to 24-all.

“It’s a simple game we just overcomplicate it at times.”

Veivers praised all his players for their efforts, with the pack matching the big Batley side throughout.

And there were some good performances from Perry Whiteley, Brett Phillips, Callum Phillips, Graeme Mattinson and Marc Shackley.

They now head to Blackpool for the Summer Bash and a clash with the old enemy Whitehaven – a game both sides need to win.

Veivers added: “I don’t have to motivate them this week we’ll be okay for that.

“The boys are very confident in there. Jamie Doran just said to them remember this one because it’s errors on our behalf that gifted them the two points and he’s probably right.

“From one to 17 today they put their hand up and had a dig.”