Mayfield seconds 27- 10 Eccles

Eccles arrived at the Mayfield Sports Centre on Saturday (13 November 2010) afternoon buoyed by the inclusion of a handful of first team players, they looked confident and in no mood for defeat.

Mayfield NWC had other ideas though, confidence in the camp is running high at the moment and they had trained hard in preparation for this game.

As usual against Eccles this was a tough uncompromising encounter with neither side prepared to take a backward step.

The home side broke the deadlock after ten minutes when Neil Connelly took a ball in his own half and danced and stepped through half the Eccles team to score a brilliant try in the corner Marsland made the difficult conversion.

Eccles pulled one back after a couple of soft penalties allowed them field position, which they took full advantage of.

Mayfield pulled away again when after good work from Ashworth and Greaves took them into the visitors’ territory Hancock slipped a good ball to Snape who used his strength to bulldoze his way over the whitewash Marsland again converted.

Eccles were here for the points though and upped their game putting in some good defensive shots along with some fast fluent attack.

They were rewarded when a defence splitting pass put their big prop over to narrow the difference.

With the score at 12 – 10 the game could have gone either way but a tough uncompromising half time talk from Ashworth and assistant Marvin Connelly galvanised their team and they came out with all guns blazing.

Ellis and Biggins worked tirelessly and Sean Hill put in some telling tackles. With 25 minutes to go first Nyland and then White made huge breaks up field on the last tackle Kershaw’s neat grubber was collected by Howard, who still had to beat two defenders to touchdown under the sticks, the conversion was a formality.

Marsland stretched the lead with first a penalty and then a drop goal.

Mayfield could have sat back with the game sewn up but not this team they wanted to put their opponents to the sword, and this they did, Lane carried the ball to the twenty, Simpson to the ten and then Kershaw gave the ball to Malloy who was unstoppable as he crashed over the line Howard converted on the final whistle to cap another good performance from the home side.

Final score 27- 10. The only down side for Mayfield on the day was the loss late in the game of the influential Neil Connelly with what appears to be a serious knee injury.

The coaches were satisfied with the game and the result, which takes the Rochdale side to second place in division four with the season approaching the half way stage.