Saturday 29th. October 2016
North 1 West
Wilmslow 28 – 12 Rochdale
If the faithful gathered together along the shiny railings in the club's colours on the Memorial Ground's new terrace were hoping that the Wolves' good form at Vale of Lune a week before would be carried forward against Rochdale, then they were to be sadly disappointed.
For fully thirty minutes, they just didn't turn up. Quite why there were so many unforced knock-ons, line out throws missing the target, misdirected kicks and a lack of intensity to their play is hard to understand. True, the conditions were more like Autumn than in previous weeks, the overnight rain and poor light may have made the ground sticky and the ball slippy and heavy but nothing to make it so difficult to play decent rugby. Fortunately, they then started to play to something like what they're capable of for the middle forty minutes, during which they scored all their points, before 'going off the boil' again for the last ten minutes.
Rochdale's current side is going through a period of rebuilding. Only five of their team who started this game were listed for the corresponding fixture last season. To add to their difficulties, their young inexperienced team had come up against four of the top five sides in this league in their opening seven matches so a return of only two wins isn't as disastrous as it may first appear. They will take solace from going down against Wilmslow, currently the fourth placed team in the league, by only three tries to two, and with fixtures against sides in the second half of the league now to come, they have every chance of improving their record and moving up the table.
In contrast, Wilmslow have played only one of the top sides and now face a testing period during which they face Warrington, Burnage, Northwich, St. Benedicts and Kirkby Lonsdale in succession.
The visitors scored first after twenty five minutes following a piece of sloppy play by the Wolves in which they allowed themselves to be turned over in midfield. Plenty of space opened up for the Rochdale runners as they showed that they knew how to pass the ball alright and how to create and take a scoring opportunity. It wasn't until the 35th minute that Bob MacCallum had a pot at goal to get the Wolves off the mark and to reduce the deficit. In the next five minutes, he had two further chances, both taken, and the Wolves went into the half time break with a 9-5 lead, which they hardly deserved.
They looked a different side though after the interval. Right winger Sam Beckett fielded a not very good kick out of defence by Rochdale's No. 10 Duffy and set up an attacking move which ended after several phases when MacCallum made a half break into the Rochdale twenty two and slipped a neat pass to the supporting second row Tom Williams, who with nobody to stop him ran in for the Wolves first try. They now enjoyed their best period of the game as they put together a series of sustained assaults in the Rochdale twenty two. After fifteen minutes or so of this, a MacCallum penalty to the corner set up a catch and drive from which prop Robert Taylor broke off to score the second try.
The Wolves then dropped the restart and were forced back into their own half, where they were penalised once too often by referee Richard Smith, who yellow carded Beckett before awarding a penalty try. Danger threatened for the Wolves but they didn't allow their one man disadvantage to disrupt them much as another fluent piece of play created the space for flanker Max Harvey to run in the third score. At 28 – 12 with just over ten minutes still on the clock, everyone expected the Wolves to get a fourth bonus point try. It was going to take something pretty heroic for Rochdale to make a real contest of it but they gave it their best shot and spent most of the final few minutes in the Wilmslow twenty two, frustrating any attempts by the Wolves to break out.
The Wolves found themselves regularly penalised, Adam Hewitt saw yellow and they must have come close to conceding a second penalty try. A final break out by full back Ben Day, however, threatened briefly to bring up the bonus point they wanted but the move broke down and soon after the referee blew for no side.
The better side had prevailed, no doubt about that, but there was still a flat sort of feeling and nobody was under any illusion about the size of the challenge coming up in the next five weeks.
Photo: Prop Robert Taylor touching down for the Wolves second try.
Match report by David Pike.
