Greens keep

AFTER last weekend’s bruising battle at Wigan, the Ormskirk team might have been forgiven for hoping for a less torrid match at Fleetwood for the round 7 fixture.

Any such hopes were quickly dispelled along with the realisation it was very much a case of out of the frying pan and into a very hot fire against the second placed home side which played with a mix of high skill and high physical intimidation.

With Ormskirk able to field a near full strength side, they soon stamped a period of dominance through stout forwards led defence and open running backs play feeding from the ground gained from the hard working Rouke, Arrowsmith, Rivers, Denton-Williams and Ball.

Further ground was gained from penalties as the home defence was pulled up for a series of indiscretions in their efforts to contain the advance of the Ormskirk side.

During this spell of dominance, the ball was moved quickly through multiple pairs of hands and across the breadth of the pitch as Kinrade and Walker engaged in slick interchanges to create openings for backs Hodgson, Everitt, Knowles and Webster to test the Fleetwood defence.

The home defence however held firm and very much against the run of play the home number 10 found his way around and through the Omskirk defence to touch down between the posts for a converted try.

The score boosted the Fleetwood side as they sought to quickly add to the score by hurling themselves into the Ormskirk forwards, who were not in any mood to oblige as big hitting tackles from Dykes,

Evans and Rivers slowed play down and allowed the visitors time to regroup and quickly move the ball downfield in a free flowing passage of play which moved crossfield from left to right before finding itself some 30 metres out in the hands of Arrowsmith.

Despite the efforts of a number of home forwards and backs he found his way to the line a few yards in from touch to open the Ormskirk scoring.

Left with a potentially tricky conversion attempt, White hit the ball sweetly over the crossbar to even the scoring.

Any hopes Ormskirk may have held about quickly increasing their own advantage were quickly dealt a double blow as firstly try scorer Arrowsmith crumpled under a heavy tackle to be helped off with an ankle injury and then two minutes later Rivers, who had been a constant thorn to the home side,