Whitehaven's Challenge Cup opponents Halifax completed an Easter double with wins over Bradford and Oldham.

But Sunday’s visitors to the Recreation Ground are running into a crop of injuries which could have a major effect on their cup line-up.

They just squeezed through 16-14 at home to Oldham on Easter Monday when influential skipper Scott Murrell was taken off after an hour.

Adam Tangata, Jacob Fairbank and Ben Kaye, who had all been carrying knocks, were substituted at various points of the game.

Oldham scored three late tries after they had looked out of it and only a missed touchline conversion prevented them from snatching a draw.

Afterwards, Halifax coach Richard Marshall said: “Scott had taken a knock.

"But, given the same situation again, I probably wouldn’t have made the same decision. We lost a bit of direction after he went off.

“I held my hand up to the players in the dressing room and took responsibility. We still shouldn’t have found ourselves in the position of scrambling to win the game and hold onto the lead.”

Halifax needed a last-gasp tackle on Adam Clay at the death to hang on to their two-point lead.

Marshall admitted the Good Friday game at Bradford, coming so soon after the Oldham clash, had taken something out of the players.

Whitehaven haven’t that problem as they have had longer to recover from their Good Friday game against Workington Town.

They came through that win with a few sore bodies but no real injury issues, unlike Fax who have the latest knocks to worry about ahead of Sunday on top of the injuries which are likely to have put two key players out of the Cup tie.

Centre Ben Heaton, who only returned from a seven-week absence against Dewsbury last weekend, and back rower Simon Grix, one of the club’s best players in 2017, are both struggling.

Grix left the field after 10 minutes at Bradford with an elbow injury, while Heaton suffered concussion and a suspected facial fracture in a heavy second-half collision.