Will Mallinson scored twice as Furness made it back-to-back wins in Cumbria Division One by easing to a 27-12 victory at bottom side Creighton in windy conditions.

The Blues could have come away from Carlisle with even more to show for their efforts than the five tries they bagged, which lifted them up to ninth in the table.

A strong Furness squad made the trip north and they had to adapt to a high wind blowing diagonally across the pitch at Sycamore Lane and it took a while for either side to break the deadlock.

The visitors survived having Jordan Ashton sent to the sin bin for a deliberate knock-on, with Creighton offering little in attack.

Once Ashton was back on the pitch, it was he who finally opened the scoring when he crashed over in the corner, following a superb 50-metre break from his own half by Jonny Hutton, with second row Brad Williamson badly skewing the conversion.

These were the only points of the first half, in which Furness’ set-piece functioned well and their passing improving as the match wore on.

They were given the perfect start to the second half when No.8 Mallinson intercepted a loose pass from the restart to score an unconverted try.

The lead was then stretched to 15-0 when Mallinson made the most of a wayward Creighton line-out to score his second, after Hutton had put a foot in touch to kill off a near length-of-the-field break Mallinson had begun.

The hosts were fielding one of their stronger line-ups of the season and they got off the mark when one of their forwards drove over the line from close range.

Furness recovered from this to bag their bonus point when Joe Mallinson sent scrum-half Deaks over, but Creighton were given a glimmer of hope when they were awarded a penalty try.

The Blues made sure of victory, however, when veteran Jack Budgen plunged over from a few feet to round off the scoring in the closing stages.

Furness will have high hopes of making it three wins in a row this weekend when they return to the Strawberry Grounds to face Carlisle Crusaders, who will hopefully be able to string a team together.

Millom travelled to Egremont shorn of several players missing due to other commitments and gave a battling performance in their 35-7 defeat, which represented a big improvement on their heavy defeat against Furness the previous week.

Windermere came up against the might of league leaders St Benedicts at Dawes Meadow and the match went according to the form book as the rampant visitors eased to a 52-7 victory against the outgunned Ambers.