Rossendale on the up and up

Date published: 07 December 2009

Chester 10 Rossendale 21

Rossendale, who were forced to reverse a fixture for the second time this year, played and won against a high flying Chester side at Hare lane on Saturday.

The continuing rain meant that Marl Pits was adjudged too wet to play on early in the week, but precautions had been put into place by Chairman Nick Ingham; and Chester kindly agreed to reverse the fixture and will come to play Rossendale in March when conditions will hopefully be drier.

Chester may have been regretting their generosity when, after some spirited lead up work from the Rossendale pack - notably the strong running of player coach Danny Collins and Paddy Pole, Danny Harrison ( playing on the right wing) wrong footed the covering defence and scored Dales first try with only 3 minutes on the clock. DeJager narrowly missed adding the extras and it remained 5-0.

Rossendale, now playing with even more confidence, hammered away again on the Chester line and were rewarded when Paddy Pole was the try scorer from a rolling maul, just reward for what was the forward dominance they were to have throughout the match. This time the extras were added and Dale were ahead 12-0 with only 20mins gone.

Unfortunately two injuries caused a reshuffle of first the pack when Kiwi lock Willie Crisp dislocated his knee, and then the backline when Alasdair Harper was forced from the field with a side strain. These changes took a while to settle and Chester were on the board when a poorly kicked clearance gave the Chester outside backs - who were always dangerous - the opportunity they needed and after some good interplay from fly half Foden and Full Back Green, left week Marcus Boyle was released and cantered in from 20 meters to score.

The second period saw DeJager strike 3 penalties to close out the game and deny Chester the bonus point, securing a notable win in a tough fixture.

Rossendale had lost games from this position before, notably Penrith. But lessons had been learnt and with DeJager and Captain Bramhall keeping Rossendale moving forward with some excellent kicking and with some great defensive efforts from Tom Albinson and Thomas Short who both seemed to be all over the park Dale would hold on for a great victory 21-10 and gain the very valuable 4 points to keep in touch with the middle of the table.

Rossendale are away to Darlington Mowden Park next week in the 1st match of the 2nd round. After having played all but the rescheduled Birkenhead Park fixture in the first round the Valley side are making a good fist of things in the dizzy heights of National League Rugby and have managed a 50% win loss record.

Having now seen the standard of the League, Coach David Wood is now looking for continuing improvement and a steady climb up the table in the 2nd half of the season. Wood says” with 9 of the 13 fixtures in the second half of the season at home there is a real chance for us to move up the table, we need to make Marl Pits a fortress and teams should be dreading coming here. “