On what was a sun drenched and practically tropical day for the Valley given the amount of rain and floods we have seen over the past month, taking all that into account, it’s a massive credit to the ground staff for what it the best playing surface Marl Pits has ever seen and all the hard work put in by then in the off season.

Rossendale did the double last season on Chester and, despite some of the Chester team’s predictions of mid-table mediocrity for the Lancastrians, Rossendale went on to finish second and unfortunately lose in the playoff finals.

Despite last season’s encounters, Chester is always a tough game and that was shown in Saturday’s 80 minutes of rugby. Chester played very much to their strengths; a fly half who kicked the leather of the home team’s ball and gained yard after yard for his second best pack, enabling them to get an edge with field position. And a no nonsense straight running inside centre, who time after time was getting them over the gain line all the afore mentioned took its toll and some woeful missed tackles gave Chester a bonus point win of 32 points to 23. Rossendale at times were the only team playing rugby but making too many errors. The line out worked very well and gave some good clean ball to the backs which as the season goes on will stand them in good stead with the pace and ability out wide from the likes of Sam LoWthian and Anthony Bingham who both shows glimpses of what’s to come, with17 year old Sam Lowthian getting over for a well worked try. Dan Collins dotted down twice from close range as a result of the power and pressure coming from the pack. All in all, a lot to work still to do, but a lot positives and nothing to be too worried at this stage. A Rossendale team firing on all cylinders will be very difficult to stop this season.

Match report by Danny Collins