As the visitors sprawled and lay all over tackles in an attempt to stem the home side's momentum, Hornets played round them to rack-up seven top notch tries.

The first came within a minute. Batley's Lingard tried to hoist a kick on the last tackle of the very first set; Simon Baldwin charged it down, gathered the bobbling loose ball and slipped a peach of a pass to the supporting Phil Hasty who scampered in from 40 metres.

On the next foray into the batley half, Hornets shipped the ball sweetly along the line for Kev King to blast in. He added a superb touchline conversion for good measure and Hornets were way ahead of the clock.

With Hornets pack determined on attack and steadfast on defence, Batley struggled to make any meaningful headway up-front. But, having taken possession close to the Hornets line, they finally got their afternoon underway when McLoughlin scored a trademark bludgeoning short-range try.

But Hornets responded almost immediately. With good field position built on good yards gained by the pack, Phil Hasty produced a magical show-and-go to dance through a static defence. The home fans were on their feet again minuutes later for what they thought was Hasty's hat-rick try off the back of a good break by Iain marsh, but the far touch-judge's liberal interpretation of the laws of parallax were enough for Ronnie Laughton to call play back for a forward pass.

But Hornets were far from done. Having driven the ball deep into Batley territory, Iain marsh took a well timed pass from Simon Svabic and smuggled Bolu Fagborun in at the corner to send Hornets in 24-4 up at the break.

The second half began where the first left off. Hornets camped on the Batley line, where Simon Baldwin capped his best game in a Hornets jersey with a bustling try; strong-arming his way through defenders to plant the ball by the posts.

As Batley sought to grind the game to a halt with their persistent spoiling, Hornets made two inspired substitutions. Gary Hulse and Wayne Corcoran entered the fray around the hour mark and, between them, teased and tortured the batley defensive line: Hulse with his sniping, incisive runs and Corcoran with some quite sublime handling in traffic.

It paid dividends almost immediately: Tommy Goulden finding Corcoran on his shoulder; Corcoran picking out Byron Smith and Smiffy scattering tacklers to score.

Batley had a fortuitous last ten minutes where Mr Laughton's sympathetic refereeing lent the score an air of respectability. Henderson grabbing a brace: falling on a dropped Batley ball - surprised as the rest of us that the knock-on had been ignored; and slumping in at the corner right on the hooter.

But the two were bisected by the afternoon's moment of real magic. A forced Batley pass, gone to ground on the Hornets 20 metre line, was snaffled by Bolu fagborun; regaining his feet and shrugging off tackles, he hit the gas with 80 metres of open field in front of him - outpacing the chasing Bulldogs defenders for a classic winger's try that brought the main stand to its feet.

After a hard few weeks, this performance went a long way to restoring a sense of pride and belief at Spotland. Special mention goes to Simon Baldwin who notched up the 100th try of his career and led from the front from the very first minute.

All in all a job well done and a very important brick in the foundation we need to take our club onwards and upwards.