Rusty Rochdale disappoint coach

ROCHDALE Hornets boss Alan Kilshaw admitted his side looked rusty in their 38-6 defeat to Dewsbury Rams on Monday evening, but is backing them to be much improved this weekend after finally getting their Betfred Championship season underway in round three.

“We’re very disappointed with the outcome,” said the Hornets boss.

“First half, we looked like a side who last played six weeks ago. There are some things we can excuse and make an excuse for – some of our timings, technique, timings in contact – were off in the first half, but there’s some things we can’t excuse.

”You look at it defensively, they scored a try off a strip, a couple of runaway tries when we dropped the ball and a couple of kick plays. They only really cracked us twice. They’ve not really earned the right there to score those 38 points.”

Trailing 32-0 at the break, the home side looked much improved in the second half, but losing Matty Hadden, Gary Middlehurst and Ben Moores to injury hampered Hornets’ revival.

”We had a chat at half-time and fixed some things up and I thought we were much better,” said Kilshaw.

“There were some pleasing individual performances out there.”

Having finally got some competitive action under their belts, Rochdale welcome Halifax to the Crown Oil Arena this weekend – and Kilshaw expects to see a better performance from his side.