Workington Town boss Phil Veivers was delighted as his side gave themselves a relegation lifeline with a hard-fought win over Dewsbury Rams.

Town came from behind to clinch the 34-24 home win with two tries from Matt Gee and one apiece for Callum Phillips, Tom Walker and Jason Mossop, plus seven goals from Jarrod Sammut.

Three tries in a six-minute spell when their opponents were down to 11 men were key to their success.

And with both Swinton and Whitehaven losing, Town will now look to next weekend's derby as a crucial clash to try and scrape out of the bottom two in the Championship.

Veivers said: "At half-time my thoughts were we'd dominated the first half but just couldn't come up with the points.

"I thought the vision from our halves was a little poor at times.

"At 8-0 up I felt comfortable but our guys looked a nervous side because they couldn't get any more points on the board.

"Then wrong options and two errors brought two tries and we went in 10-8 down.

"I asked for attitude and a bit of enthusiasm starting the game up tempo for the second half but two tries later we were behind the eight-ball and thinking how we were going to dig ourselves out of that."

Dewsbury plotted their own downfall with three yellow cards and one red handed out to the players.

Veivers added: "To be fair I liked their over aggression. I thought the sending off was a bit harsh but the men in the bin deserved to be in the bin and it cost them in the end.

"They were down to 11 men and we upped the tempo and played with a bit of speed and scored three tries and took the game away from them."

The bad news for Town was the loss of Brett Phillips to a hamstring injury but Karl Olstrom will return for the Haven derby after serving his two-match ban.

"The results dropped for us today and we got the win we were after," added Veivers.

"All we can do is concentrate on the derby next week and train like mad to get the job done against Whitehaven."