Mark as sub

12 yards it was left to Higgs to roll the ball for Rother to take the brute force approach rather than finesse, and his effort crashed against one of the defenders.

Ramsbottom continued to get a lot of joy down both flanks and the corners total kept rising. Again Higgs sent in a tempting in-swinger to the far post, and again Ellison got to the ball first but nodded wide of the goal.

Higgs released Brown down the left with an outside of the foot pass for him to escape his marker take the opportunity to try and get on the score sheet, but his effort flew just wide.

The 71st minute brought the two great chances for the home side. A searching ball forward found Dom Marie on the edge of the box, he got past his man and tried placing his shot which the keeper managed to parry away only for it to fall to Rother who tried lifting the ball back over the recovering stopper, but again he did his bit to take a point back down the M6 for his team.

The Rams’ winning goal came from a Nathan Brown corner – he lofted the ball towards the goal and only minutes after entering the fray, substitute Luke Thompson got himself between the keeper and ball and nodded into the empty net to finally give the Rams the lead they deserved.

Ramsbottom saw out the remainder of the game without incident. The four minutes of added time didn’t affect the scoreline, and victory was fully deserved. Although the fluency and tempo may have dropped a little in the second period, the control and application was there to see and enjoyable to watch.