'˜House must fare better against rivals

The West Enders lost out by 103 runs against in-form Walsden at the Brooks Foundation Ground before sinking to a narrow defeat against top-of-the-table Ramsbottom.

Due to this season’s unique format, with sides facing each other just once, ‘House are already having to play catch up and Heaton acknowledges that results will have to improve against their rivals.

“We’ve got to beat those teams that we’re expecting to be in and a round us,” he said. “We should be finishing in the top five and if we want to do better than that we’ve got to beat our rivals.

“We’ve now lost against Walsden and Ramsbottom which isn’t what you want. It’s not the end of the world because there’s plenty of time to bounce back. We’ve just got to recover from it and press on.”

Lowerhouse will look to bounce back in the league when they travel to Lanehead on Sunday to tackle Backup but, prior to that, they’ll be battling it out with Church for a place in the quarter-final of the Worsley Cup at Blackburn Road tomorrow.

“We’ve got the cup on Saturday and the league on Sunday so it’s onwards and upwards,” said Heaton. “As we say every year, we want to be competitive in every format and try to win every single trophy that’s available.

“We’ve got Rochdale in the next round of the Lancashire Cup on the horizon and the next thing that is looming is the Twenty20. This is exactly what we wanted.

“The mood in the camp on Sunday was despair. If we win and get through to a cup quarter-final then the mood changes and everybody is buoyant.

“We detest getting beat. We want to keep that feel good factor and increase our confidence. We’re turning up to win.”