KENDAL travelled across the M62 to play Cleckheaton and on a very blustery day, with the wind behind them in the first half, dominated territory through the ever-accurate boot of fly-half Dan Stephens in the first half.

Cleckheaton 9 - Kendal 23.

It was Cleckheaton who put the first points on the board, however, when in the opening few minutes Kendal were penalised at a ruck. Winger Owen Edwards struck a good penalty into the wind to give the home side a 3-0 lead.

Stephens, not to be out done, kicked two long-range penalties in the 12th and 15th minutes to give Kendal the lead.

When veteran second-row John Dudley was sin-binned on the half hour Kendal took full advantage from the penalty kick into the corner and prop forward Billy Coxon reaped the rewards when he was driven over the whitewash from the lineout by his pack, to score an unconverted try.

Five minutes later, with Cleckheaton under all sorts of pressure, a bewildering long pass across the front of their own posts was fumbled and resulted in a Kendal scrum. With the Kendal front row of Coxon, Duncan Green and Richard Harryman once again giving awesome performances, the Cleckheaton pack could not hold the scrum legally and the referee rightly awarded a penalty try which Stephens converted to give his side an 18-3 lead at the break.

Edwards, with an enormous penalty kick from inside his own half, pulled three points back early in the second half. Moments later he again found the target with his third penalty of the afternoon.

Kendal took a scrum against the head in the 51st minute and the ball was swiftly transferred along the back line for flanker Andrew Hudson, lurking out on the right touch line, to power his way through a couple of would-be tacklers and touch down wide out for an unconverted try.

The last quarter of the game deteriorated into a scrappy affair, littered with handling errors and with neither side able to control the ball for any length of time.