Rochdale Men’s Seconds 4 - 2 Urmston Men’s Seconds

Rochdale Men’s Hockey Seconds

Rochdale's second game of the weekend resulted in victory over Urmston.

Rochdale started the game strong with good pace and passing initially but conceded a lot of possession and allowed the Urmston players to have plenty of time on the ball without going unchallenged.

However, Rochdale caught Urmston napping. A run into the D resulted in a short corner. The ball was injected with pace by Dean Close to Imran Ansari who received the ball and took a first time shot, which hit an Urmston foot on the line but deflected into the centre of the goal to gi v Rochdale the lead.

Urmston showed why they were second in the league table but Rochdale showed resilience in the face of pressure and reached half time with their narrow lead intact.

At the start of the second half  the Rochdale defence pushed high up the field but this allowed Urmston to counter and score.

Rochdale threw everything at the Urmston defence and eventually found a way through. Close hit a strike from top right of the D to score the second goal for Rochdale.

Two Rochdale players were shown a green card (sent off for two minutes), but despite being temporarily down to nine men, Rochdale scored from a short corner. The ball was injected by Graham Broadley to Imran Ansari who scored for the second time finding the far corner.

Urmston clawed a goal back to keep them in the game at but a piercing ball into the D found its way to Broadley, who tapped the ball into the goal at the far post to give Rochdale a two-goal lead.

With time fast running out, the play started to become scruffy from both sets of players, the game lost its flow and when the final whistle came the relief of the Rochdale players was evident.

Captain Dean Close: “The gents played excellently all game and with having two games in one weekend it was always going to be tough especially against a team much higher than us in the league. On the day though the Rochdale players clearly wanted this win more than the Urmston players.

"Atticus Promotions man-of-the-match went to Sam Wilkinson and George Rogers who were both excellent all game and nothing could split them".