HEATH crashed to their third successive defeat and are still without a win in this season's National Conference Premier League.

The visitors started better with their big pack getting on top and they opened the scoring in the seventh minute through full-back Gareth Brain, Geoff Hick converted.

For Heath, big prop Dave Smith and hooker Ian Honey strived to open up the tight Raiders' defence but with little joy. And the visitors registered again midway through the half. Following sustained pressure, burly prop Danny Burton flipped the ball up out of the tackle for loose-forward Carlos Sanchez to score on the right. Hick added the extras.

With the Oulton pack in control, Heath did themselves no favours by constantly losing the ball on the second and third tackles, although young stand-off Ste Brown looked threatening in possession.

The Yorkshiremen extended their lead to 16-0 again through Brain.

With half-time approaching Heath but they were given a glimmer of hope when good work by centre Mark Hayton gave them a good attacking position.

From the play-the-ball the Haselden brothers, Ian and Wayne, combined to feed Honey who in turn put winger Mike Woods over in the corner.

Heath started the second half in better fashion and within four minutes scrum-half Dave Scott sold an outrageous dummy to open up the Raiders line and cross from 10m out.

From the restart Heath charged upfield with Scott again in the thick of the action again feeding centre Anthony Marsh. With options inside and out, Marsh instead elected to throw two dummies, splitting the defence to cross out wide before going in under the posts to give Woods an easy conversion.

At this stage Heath were just two points adrift and seemingly set to take control.

Things turned sour on 52 minutes though when Marsh received a yellow card for interference at a play-the-ball on his own try-line and from the resulting penalty Raiders' scrum-half Nicky Dobson crossed near the posts, giving Hick a simple conversion.

Three minutes later Oulton had a bit of luck that wrapped up the game. The ball appeared to go forward as an Oulton attacker lost possession but the ball was hacked and the visitors won the scramble for possession on the 22.

Brain then took the ball from acting-half and sidestepped through to complete his hat-trick, Hick's conversion rounding off the scoring.

To cap a bad afternoon for Heath Wayne Haselden was dismissed in the final minute for dissent.