CALDY'S first away trip of the season saw them take the shortest away trip they will make of the year.

They travelled to Greater Manchester to face Cheshire rivals Sale FC in a match that had both league points and a place in the Cheshire Cup Semi-Final up for grabs for the victors.

Sale had an impressive home record having not been beaten at home since Caldy last visited back in December 2016.

The game started in poor weather conditions that covered most of the NorthWest at the early part of Saturday afternoon.

The game was pretty even in the first ten minutes until the hosts were awarded a penalty directly under the posts which was slotted home by Chris Johnson.

Just four minutes later, the visitors were level with a penalty of their own which was reward for some great play in the opening part of the game.

After Johnson tapped a penalty into touch the home side were awarded a penalty try, the defence infringed the forwards in a maul towards the line.

From then on the game went from end to end with the teams trading blows with Ben Jones slotting away his second penalty of the afternoon and another just after the half hour reduced the home side’s advantage to a single point.

It looked like that would be the end of the scoring for the first half.

However, with less than a minute on the watch, Sale's Aaron Reed crossed for the second try of the afternoon, with the added two points for the conversion it meant the hosts had an eight point advantage at half time.

Sale were reduced to 14 men in the early part of the second half after Reed was sin binned for a deliberate knock on.

Caldy immediately made Sale pay with a converted try from Nick Royle, after another two penalties from the hosts had a lead of more than two scores.

With the minutes ticking down Caldy pushed looking to take more than a losing bonus point home with them and in the final minute, after a superb passing move, the ball got to Nick Royle once more.

He crossed in the corner but, unfortunately, the conversion was missed from a tight angle and this exciting game ended Sale 26-24 Caldy.

Despite the defeat, Caldy can take a lot of positives into next week's home game against Loughborough Students, next Sunday at Paton Field.