Bradford & Bingley 19

Macclesfield 14

To borrow the old football cliche, this really was a game of two halves.

The first period saw the Bees playing with a degree of panache, while Macclesfield back-pedalled; the second saw Macclesfield in the ascendancy, while the Bees defended doggedly.

The Bees lost three regulars in Joe Simpson, Richard Hughes and Bloues Volschenk before kick-off and so were forced to reshuffle, bringing in Phil Greaves, Alan Bateson and Kern Yates.

Although the loss of Volschenk deprived the Bees of a key attacking weapon from the base of the scrum, his replacement in the back row, Kern Yates, had possibly his best game for the Bees and was first to every breakdown.

The scoring opened in familiar fashion as Bees skipper Tom Rhodes slotted over a ninth-minute penalty.

The Bees spent much of the opening quarter camped in Macclesfield territory and whenever the men from Cheshire managed to clear their lines they seemed to find the Bees back three of Benny Greaves, Richard Tafa and Marcus Dracup, who returned every ball with interest.

It was after one such period of sustained pressure that the Bees increased their advantage as Tom Rhodes was on hand to chip over a drop goal on 17

minutes.

Five minutes later the Bees confirmed their superiority with an excellent try finished off by Phil Greaves.

Tom Rhodes opened up a gap in the Macclesfield defence with a clever short pass to Richard Tafa who burst through the defensive cover from 40 metres out. As Tafa was tackled he managed to slip the ball to Greaves who barged over from short range.

Rhodes' conversion was further improved by a penalty after 26 minutes to leave the score at 16-0.

Macclesfield were sparked into life but despite plenty of probing time, they only had a Newell penalty on the stroke of half-time to show for their efforts.

The second half saw Macclesfield gaining the upper hand territorially, but they only managed to breach the home defence once, on 68 minutes, when winger Frost dived in at the right-hand corner after a fine move down that touchline.

In one of the Bees' rare visits to the Macclesfield half, Tom Rhodes slotted over another penalty in the 54th minute to keep Macclesfield at arm's length.

Two Newell penalties in the 56th and 72nd minutes cut the deficit to five points but the Bees held out as Macclesfield laid seige to their 22 in the final ten minutes.