A good win in local derby.

Heath ran out easy winners in this local derby, though both sides had regulars missing through injury. On a cold night at West Vale, played under lights, Heath were on top from the start - taking a lot of the visitor’s set piece ball, though quite a few handling errors from both sides made for a scrappy first half. That said, one bit of magic from Heath’s centre Sam Pollard warmed the large crowd up, when he finished off a lovely sweeping move down the back line to crash over between the posts. He added the extras himself for a 7 – 0 score line. Heath then seemed to hit their stride in the second half, with the pack dominating their opposition in every department. James Wilkinson taking several balls against the head in the scrum. This set up the platform for the Heath no 8 and Captain, Stephen Hare, to pick up at the base of the scrum and to score. Converted by Pollard for a 14 – 0 lead to Heath. The home side were in total control now and sub Jack Sheldrake was running riot out wide. A good pass from standoff Ezra Hinchliffe sent Pollard through and he offloaded to Sheldrake who scored a well-worked and well-executed try. Whilst the conversion was missed, Heath were now pulling away at 19 – 0. The Brods then hit back from the restart and put together some good phases of play. This allowed McKenzie to cut through some weak tackling to score and pull the visitors back to19 – 7. However, Heath had the final say in the game when a strong running Peter Birkett came into the line from fullback and cut open the Brods out wide. He then found Sheldrake in support, who then handed off a few would-be tacklers to crash over out wide. Pollard converted from the touchline to round off a great performance from the Heath lads.