Otley Town 2, Sherburn White Rose 0

With such a horrendous backlog of West Yorkshire League Premier Division fixtures and an imminent League Cup semi-final, Otley Town manager Dave Morris took the opportunity to rest several of his first- team players for this home game against Sherburn White Rose.

Town had beaten Sherburn away from home convincingly in the County Cup some weeks earlier and therefore the logic was that, even with a weakened team, Town would be good enough to take the points.

And so it proved. Town were always the better and, with the exception of a dodgy ten-minute spell in the second half, when Sherburn woke up, could have won more convincingly.

Town opened the scoring on 25 minutes when Tom Walker reacted first to an excellent through ball and calmly stroked his shot into the far corner.

They could have had more but for good goalkeeping and sloppy finishing. However, a 1-0 half-time lead was sufficient given that the ‘big guns’ on the bench could be intro-duced to the fray if needed.

The second half was something of a non-event once the unmarked Chris Baxter headed home a corner midway through the session.

Sherburn did give Town a couple of scares as the home players became a little complacent but nothing with which Jamie Simms, Dan Chadwick, Gav Phillis and co. couldn’t cope.

With the heat taking it's toll and some legs tiring, Scott Cater, Luke Danskin and Johnny Daniels were brought on to alleviate a situation which changed very little, and Town were happy to move up to sixth in the table without further injury to any of their first-string players.