Crossleyans were never headed, their creative attacking back play giving them the edge over Darlington's power pack.

Crocs could not have had a better start when from the kick off, Darlington knocked on and from the ensuing scrum, fly half Gareth Ott fed inside centre Neil Richardson, and Ott then ran round Richardson on a dummy run, the centre shooting under the posts after three minutes of play.

Within minutes No 8 Ryan Hammond broke through to touch down at the sticks for another easy conversion by scrum half Ed Cockroft.

Chris Jones was held up just short and then wing James Wainwright was pulled up for a forward pass.

Darlington's only reply was a penalty on 20 minutes by wing Danny Anderson, immediately followed by one from Ed Cockcroft and then another by Anderson all in the space of five minutes to bring the score to 6-17.

Darlington began to assert themselves and from a scrum in midfield Darlington's back row crashed over at the posts.

Crocs were stung into action bundling the Darlington forwards into touch from the restart and from the line-out Hammond stormed through to the 22 metre line. From the scrum Darlington's kick upfield was caught by full back Chris Seymour whose crossfield run set up James Wainwright coming in from the opposite wing and he cut through and the ball went via Ed Cockroft and Gareth Ott to wing Joe Baker who out-paced the full back to score in the corner, Cockroft converting from the touchline.

Darlington forward pressure told when a driving maul resulted in a try wide out for Anderson to make a crucial conversion to haul his team back into contention to 20-24.

Crossleyans returned to attack and Cockroft's 40 metre penalty made the score 20-27.

Darlington's high kick upfield was returned with a 50 metre touch finder by Seymour to the home 22 metre.