Penrith Rugby Club earned their place in the Cumbria Cup final with a 29-7 win over Carlisle.

The victors took as strong a side as was possible for the semi-final but head coach David Preston didn’t risk any of his players who had been carrying knocks. So, effectively, it was two much-changed sides that competed to appear in the final and will be a lot different to the line-ups for their league meeting during the second half of the season.

Penrith couldn’t have had a better start as Nathan Wooff hoisted the kick-off and the Carlisle player underneath lost his feet and young Newton Rigg student Adrigh Cole found Josh Dowson who powered through to score. It was one of the fastest tries on record, at 21 seconds.

In the third minute, Penrith were once more on the front foot.

First Ryan Lee made ground and then the outstanding Dowson, before the Penrith three quarters took play to the line. The ball was then recycled and popped to New Zealander Lee, who powered over.

Five minutes later, Dowson was again involved in the visitors third score as he won line-out ball close to the home line. The forwards then set-up the driven maul and shunted Carlisle’s pack backwards over their own line. Tom Lindsay claimed the score.

After a quarter of an hour, Dowson broke from a scrum in his own half, set-up Ed Swale at scrum-half who moved the ball on to Jonny Wills. He made good ground and then returned the ball to Swale on the outside. He showed some nifty footwork to go in at the corner.

At this stage, there was a serious injury to Carlisle back Jack Carruthers and it was very quickly obvious it was going to be some time before he could be moved, so play was switched to the adjacent pitch.

This did Penrith no favours but they did score a fifth try when Carlisle won a line-out deep in their 22 and attempted to run the ball from their own line.

Combative flanker Lindsay was awake to the plan and he caught the runner under his own posts. The ball flew loose into the air and Adam Howe dotted down.

Matters then started to get a little feisty as a number of infringements resulted in Penrith losing two men to the bin.

Credit to Penrith that they managed the loss of players well enough to thwart whatever Carlisle could throw at them.

The Carlisle injury toll started to mount, however, the replacements fitted in well, and it was one of them, winger Mark Armiger, who went under the posts for a try which Jason Israel converted.

This would prove to be Carlisle’s only score of the game, and indeed, the only score of the second half.