Hornets take on Doncaster

Rochdale Hornets v Doncaster, 3.00pm KO Spotland Stadium

Rochdale Hornets all-but sealed their place in League One's top two with an impressive 42-28 demolition of Keighley last week and, looking ahead to this weekend’s tie with fellow promotion-hopefuls, Doncaster, Head Coach Alan Kilshaw said: “It will be a massive challenge, I rate them highly.

“They have been very similar to us where they have had a lot of injuries at the start of the year, but they still managed to get some points on the board and tick over.

“They’ve got some real threats across the pitch and we’ve got to be on our mettle.

“We can’t just turn up and think it’s just going to happen this week, we showed in patches last week that we can perform but we’ve really got to be on our game this week.

“It should be a good game, hopefully and big crowd and we will be looking to sign off in style.”

Meanwhile, after a below par start to the season, Doncaster Coach Gary Thornton has led his side into the top four ahead of the split, wrapping it up in style as they thrashed Hemel 80-18 last week.

Thornton insists his side will travel to Rochdale with confidence, he said: “We are hitting a bit of form at the minute.

“The team spirit in the camp is fantastic, everybody is chomping at the bit, wanting to play and there is lots of competition for places.

“We have to go in confident, we are looking forward to the challenge.

“In recent weeks, we've gone into every game as favourites, but I guess we are a bit of an underdog this weekend and we are looking forward to testing ourselves against one of the best teams in the league.

“We are going to a team who sit second in the league with a really good home record and we want to be the team that spoils that for them."

Turnstiles open from 1.30pm.

Heywood, Middleton and Pennine Township Origin Teams will play the curtain raiser from 1.45pm and the Samba Dance 'Hornettes' will be chearleading pre-game and at half time.