Dale Ferguson insisted he couldn’t ‘ask for anymore’ from his Dewsbury Rams players in their opening day defeat against Halifax Panthers

The Rams gave as good as they got in the curtain-raiser to the new season and led 4-0 and 10-6 against a Fax outfit, led by former Dewsbury head coach Liam Finn, who demonstrated why they will be pushing for a top six place come the end of the season.

On the defeat, new head coach Ferguson said: “Obviously I am a little bit disappointed with the overall result but, as a coaching staff, we can’t ask for anymore from the effort the boys put out there today.

“Halifax are a top six team in the Championship and for us to go hand-in-hand with them was good. We looked really good and the scoreline flattered them.”

Fax struggled to deal with Calum Turner’s high kicks throughout but Dewsbury paid the ultimate price for Jackson Walker’s second half sin-binning as the visitors crossed twice in the space of five minutes to put them firmly in control.

Ferguson said: “We led and they crept back in. I let Marchy (Paul March) and Conor (Turner) sort that sort of stuff out with the halves but Calum is a really good attacking kicker and he can really put it on really good for us and it worked really well for us.

“But there were lapses in attention with their two tries on our goal line but moving forwards we can take a lot out of that game.

“It swayed either way for both teams. They lost a man and we started getting the edge a bit and then we lost Jackson. It was hard for us losing a middle and they scored straight down our middle.

“It was probably a crucial thing but we were in the game right until the end which we are happy about as a staff.

“We’ll tweak a few things and get the boys ready for Batley. We have got a week to recover before Batley the week after.”