Dale Colts inspired by Wilby to start their

PAUL KILSHAW NEW BRIGHTON ............. 0 ROSSENDALE COLTS ... 29 ROSSENDALE Senior Colts travelled to the Wirral to play New Brighton in a game that marked the start of the conference phase of the Colts leagues, just as the winter winds arrived for the first time this season.

The home side had bolstered their team from Dale’s previous visit and a hard fought, but fair encounter kicked off with Dale’s tails up after the previous week’s excellent win.

Dale immediately applied the pressure and started what was to be the first of many forays into the home team’s half.

A penalty move on the edge of the twenty-two nearly saw Rossendale on the scoreboard with less than five minutes gone, but a knock-on just short of the line put an end to that.

Throughout the game, Rossendale worked to gain the upper hand as New Brighton defended fiercely and on several occasions after doing the hard graft to create an attack, handling errors resulted in possession being turned over.

It was from an opposition scrum for one of these handling errors on the five metre line that Rossendale stole the ball against the head and moved the ball quickly out to Jordan Fortune who made a clever kick through to give Henry Higgins the chance to score. Dale’s second try came after a couple of strong forwards phases presented the ball to Henry Wilby to make a darting run before feeding the ball to Jordan Fortune, who made a strong run from the half way line, evading a couple of defenders on the way to score under the posts with Henry Wilby scoring the conversion.

Dale’s third try came after the ball moved across the park quickly