New Brighton Senior Colts 7 - 46 Rossendale Senior Colts

Rossendale Senior Colts opened the new season with a comfortable win away at New Brighton, who were lacking in players which forcing the game to be played with reduced numbers. It was a solid performance against a team that never gave up and played with effort, aggression and commitment right up the final play, but the strength in depth of the Rossendale squad and some excellent teamwork was just too much for the home side to deal with.

In the first half, Rossendale scored five unanswered tries with the pick of them coming from a super chase of a twenty-two restart by Idrees Nazir to pressure the catcher into turning over the ball and allowing Josh Harrison to make a barrelling run at the New Brighton defence. A neat offload in the tackle fed Isaac Cornwall, who made some good distance towards the line and passed to Henry Wilby to finish the score under the posts, with Will Walmsley adding the extras. The other first half tries were scored by Tom Unsworth, Will Walmsley and Mark Rutherford-Shaw.

New Brighton came out of the blocks much quicker in the second half, and scored a converted try within a couple of minutes of the restart. Rossendale rallied though, and continued to keep the pressure on the home side and were rewarded with four tries in the second half. The second of these tries came straight from a long New Brighton restart caught by Jordan Fortune in Dale's twenty-two where he made good ground through the chasing New Brighton defence to set up some nice backs' inter-play with Henry Wilby to allow Callum Pelling to score. Jordan Fortune also scored the final try of the game after receiving the ball from a quickly taken penalty and galloping half the length of the pitch to score.

Jordan Fortune was also awarded the Man of the Match for an energetic and aggressive performance all around the field.

A massive thanks must go out to the lads who didn't get much game time - the heavily reduced numbers made it difficult to get everyone a reasonable amount of playing time, but we will ensure that this is balanced out in the next few games.

And another massive thanks to all the parents and spectators who travelled over there today - it was a fantastic, noisy but very positive support.

Next week we've got a home game against Liverpool St Helens, so I'm looking forward to building upon this win.