Rossendale Senior Colts 29-24 Liverpool St Helens Senior Colts

Rossendale played hosts to Liverpool St Helens in Round 2 of the Raging Bull Colts leagues on Sunday where the teams put on a spectacle of rugby. As the lads have developed through the rugby age groups, LSH has been a bit of a bogie team that Rossendale had been unable to beat, until this week where Rossendale finally took a deserved victory.

After the first 15 minutes where an arm-wrestle developed as both teams tried to over-come the opposition, albeit mainly in the visitors' half, Rossendale started to shift the momentum in their favour. They worked well at the breakdown, arriving quickly to secure and recycle the ball quickly, and moved the ball to the backline in an attempt to penetrate a strong defensive line. The first breakthrough came when Morgan Cornell stole an LSH lineout ball and released Jordan Fortune to smash through the first phase of defence before offloading to Will Walmsley, who jinked his way around a couple of tackles to sprint in to score under the posts and kick the conversion of his own try. A few minutes later, Dale were on the 'board again after Mark Rutherford-Shaw fielded a clearance kick and immediately sprinted back at LSH. After fending off a couple of tackles, he passed out to Will Walmsley who fed Tom Unsworth on an incisive run through to score. Rossendale continued to play at a high tempo, with good interchange between forwards and backs, excellent ball retention and moving the ball across the field to keep stretching the opposition defence. After a great run down the right wing by Idrees Nazir and good support running from Callum Pelling, the ball was quickly shipped from the ruck back towards the left where Jordan Fortune and Mark Rutherford-Shaw combined to create space for Ben Whitehead to run through and score, again converted by Will Walmsley. Rossendale were not to have it all their own way though - LSH regrouped and reshuffled the line-up and started to apply some pressure back on the home side, where a period of poor discipline first saw a penalty moved ten metres closer to their goal line, followed by a yellow card reducing them to 14 players and LSH went over to score just before the break.

The second half started with Dale still down to 14 players, but they fielded the restart and worked hard to move the ball up field. After a good return run from Isaac Cornwall, and a few phases of quick recycling saw the ball released to the backs running and creating space for the support runners to get through before Callum Pelling sprinted over to score. The next 15 minutes really turned up the tension, as LSH fought back strongly and scored three tries to bring the scores level and it looked like they might pinch the game to retain their record over Rossendale, but the Dale lads stepped up and battled hard to win and retain ball. With the pack having the upper hand in the scrums and Charlie Coward taking a couple against the head in his first game at hooker for Rossendale, the momentum edged back in Dale's favour. It was from a scrum with a couple of minutes left on the scrum that Ben Whitehead spotted a gap in the defence and called to Max Lyth at scrum half just in time to exploit the gap in an improvised move and score the winning try.

It was a thrilling game where every player on the pitch deserved credit for a great performance with none more so than the Man of the Match, Ben Whitehead, for great aggression, hard running, good communication and a flawless performance throughout.