Sandbach 12 Rossendale 20 (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Sandbach 12 Rossendale 20

9:30am Tuesday 27th January 2009 in

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IT wasn’t pretty but Rossendale picked up a vital win to get their promotion charge back on course.

Evergreen hocker Paul Keys smashed open the Sandbach defence to open the scoring and Shaun Stirrup slotted over the conversion.

But Rossendale took it as a cue to relax and stopped producing the clinical rugby of previous matches and gave away needless penalties as Sandbach get the gap to 7-6.

But a Stirrup penalty gave Dale a 10-6 lead at the break.

However, Dale were not ‘in the zone’ after the restart and their lead was clipped to 10-9 with another home penalty. The team’s exchanged kicks and the game was still finely balanced at 13-12.

But Dale finally clinched victory when stand-in pack leader Mackenzie and his back row partner Short turned the ball over in the Sandbach 22 with some brutal tackling.

Stirrup pushed the ball wide to Bramhall, who fed his backline quickly to release Walmesley went over in the corner and Stirrup provided the extras.

Manager Mick Barnes said: “A win is after all a win, but this was not a good performance - the staff know it, the supporters know it and the players know it. We must be more clinical, and work throughout every game and not switch off or lower our standards to suit the opposition.”