Sacred Heart’s reserves continued their good start to the season with a scrappy performance against Hindsford Reserves.

Hearts started the brighter of the two teams but found it hard to get any fluency in their passing. Jack Holt became the only real outlet as Hearts laboured in breaking down the Hindsford defence.

Gradually, Hearts began to put the visitors defence on the backfoot and the breakthrough came after 15 minutes.

A back pass to the visitors’ goalkeeper was poorly cleared. The ball fell invitingly to Holt who coolly returned the ball into the half guarded net to give Hearts the lead.

That lead was doubled five minutes later. A surging run from Ben Fielding took the attack deep into the visitors area. The ball was intercepted and laid back to the keeper but Fielding had continued his run and charged at the stopper’s kick. The keeper was unable to clear the ball and it rebounded off the midfielder into the net.

With a two-goal advantage, Hearts should have put the game out of sight but let Hindsford back into the game. The

visitors’ left winger was allowed the freedom of the box to take down a cross, but luckily he shot straight at Sweeney. However, it was not long before Hindsford reduced the deficit.

John Lloyd was dispossessed on the edge of the box and from the resulting cross the visitors’ forward smashed the ball past Sweeney.

The second half began much the same as the first with the game becoming a midfield scrap. Stead worked tirelessly in the middle as he tried to force openings and Hearts made a triple substitution bringing on three forwards in Williams, Kershaw and Smith. The latter came close to extending the lead with 20 minutes to go but the keeper got a firm hand on the shot to turn it behind for the corner.

Neither side made any real chances as the clock ran down and Hearts recorded another three points.

The game was sponsored by the first team who were not in action and the £60 man of the match was split three ways between Jack Stead, Jack Holt and Johnny Barnes.

Rochdale Sacred Heart’s annual Sportsmans Dinner went down well on Friday night. Comedian Gary Skyner

provided the humour for the night and the guest speaker was former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland International Ronnie Whelan.

The dinner was at the Ratcliffe Arms suite at Rochdale Football Club. After the dinner and formalities, the usual auctioning of various football memorablilia took place.

Items such as signed pictures of Ronaldinho, Micah Richards, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez plus many more help the club raise just over £4,500 pounds on the night. The club offered thanks to Jim Dunne for organising the event with the help of many others and to all the people and companies who generously sponsored the dinner, again contributing a fantastic amount.