CAILEY Miller ran in four tries as Warrington Wolves brushed aside Salford 66-10 in the National Championship.
The Wolves crossed the whitewash 12 times in the shadow of the CorpAcq Stadium, Eccles, with Hollie Brussels also bagging a brace.
Brussels had opened the scoring as early as the fourth minute when the ball was spread wide to the wings following a scrum for a knock on by former Wire full back Anna Dennis. Michelle Davis knocked over the first of her nine conversions for the afternoon.
Wire had doubled their lead within a minute of the restart, with Beth Haynes making one of her trademark bursts through the middle, backed up superbly by Maddie Price. The ball was worked out wide again to Brussels, before Georgia Westwood crashed over from close range. Davis added the extras.
Ellie Jelves got her name on the scoreboard after another poor restart from the home side had seen the ball go into touch, before Miller broke through some weak tackling to scorch in from almost 60 yards out. With Davis adding the extras for both tries, the Wire found them 24-0 up with a little over 15 minutes gone.
It was Salford’s turn to score from the restart capitalising on a knock on from Ellie Costello and getting the ball to Mia Regan to score wide out. Dennis missed the kick.
Errors and poor discipline from both sides began to creep in, but the Warrington defence repelled everything Salford could throw at them. And when Katrina Blencowe knocked on in the 24th minute, a rampaging Shannon Stephens was pulled down just short of the line. A looping ball from Davis was well picked up by Miller after she stopped it with her foot, before beating the cover defence to plonk it down nonchalantly in the corner for her second and effectively end the game as a contest at 28-4.
Moments later, Miller was in again after breaks by Westwood and Brussels before Westwood added her second of the afternoon to make it 38-4 heading into the break.
Any hopes by Salford that Wire would lose focus in the second half were quickly dispelled when Brussels scampered in down the left to stretch the lead out to 44-4 but the home side were buoyed by a moment of genius from Dennis, who chipped over the top, regathered the kick and beat the defence to go under the posts, before adding the points, to make it 44-10 in the 52nd minute.
With both packs trying to gain the upper hand, the game became scrappy and littered with poor handling and ill-discipline, and it took a moment of magic from centre Kaitlin Hilton racing in from 60 yards after poor play on the last from Isabella Woods to stretch Wire further in front. Davis’s conversion brought up the Wire’s half century.
Jen Myler, Miller and Costello added further tries in the final 10 minutes to confirm Wire’s dominance over the 80 minutes.
Head coach Lee Westwood said: “There were a lot of things we did wrong against Sheffield last week that we improve on this week which was good.
“Defensively we probably weren’t challenged as much but we switched off a little for their tries which is something we need to build on for next week.
“There were lots of really pleasing things about today both in attack and defence. We did try to force a few things today instead of sticking to the processes, but this game will give the girls confidence.”
