ROCHDALE HORNETS are feeling frustrated by the week off for League One clubs after their victory over league leaders North Wales Crusaders.
Gary Thornton’s side moved into the top four with a 20-16 victory, avenging their earlier season defeat in Colwyn Bay.
Thornton said: “We wanted to be playing again. It’s another issue with this league that we have a week off, although at least all teams have. We’ve got a few bodies that are probably a bit sore, so the week off has maybe come at a good time for us.
“Then we’ve got two tough away games against Swinton and Workington, two sides that are above us in the table, so again they’re going to be challenging.
“If we play like we did against Crusaders and over the last four weeks, we’ve been really good. We’ve got to carry that momentum in to the game against Swinton and see what we can do. We’ve got ourselves in the top four now and we want to stay there. That was always the objective at the start of the season, so we want to finish as high up as we can and end up in the top four and we’ll have to carry on playing as we are to do that.”
Rochdale have their fate very much in their own hands, with their final three games coming against three fellow challengers for the top four. After the trips to Swinton and Workington, they welcome Dewsbury to the Crown Oil Arena for the final game of the regular season.
The win over North Wales was their fourth successive victory, following triumphs over Whitehaven, Goole and Newcastle, holding them in good stead for the run-in.
Thornton added: “I’m really pleased. I thought we were really good against North Wales. There were spells at the back end of the second half where Crusaders really had us on the rack, but I thought the team spirit and togetherness was there again.
“We made a great start and first half we were over ninety percent completion and defended really well, scored some nice tries, so overall really pleased.
“We identified early on that we wanted to put some pressure on their back five and (Lewis) Else’s kicking game in particular was very good and turned them round, forced drop-outs and put them under pressure, and sixty to seventy percent of the game was played in their third of the field. We earned that with our defence when they were coming out of their own try line area.
“One of the things we were conscious of was how poor we were when we played them away from home, so we wanted to put a few things right and we did that.”