CARL FORSTER is hoping this weekend’s trip to Hunslet doesn’t turn out to be another “coach’s worst nightmare”.

It was thrills-and-spills all the way as North Wales Crusaders lost an epic battle 37-36 at home to Rochdale Hornets last time out.

“It was good for the neutral, but it was a coach’s worst nightmare,” head coach Forster told CruCast.

“When you score that many points, but you concede one more, it was a tough pill to swallow, but we’ve got to learn from it.”

The lead changed hands on no fewer than eight occasions over the course of the afternoon.

Crusaders were the first team to take the lead with Owain Abel’s penalty and although first half tries arrived via Dan Coates, Pat Ah Van and Forster, Rochdale held the slenderest of 19-18 advantages at the interval.

Hornets held the lead for much of the second period, but tries from Joe Baldwin, Forster and Jake Burns saw Crusaders edge ahead in the closing 10 minutes.

However, Lameck Juma’s 74th minute score and Martyn Ridyard’s conversion won it for Rochdale.

From Forster’s perspective, errors once more played their part as Crusaders suffered their second consecutive defeat.

“I think what we struggled with was when we made our errors, we made them on play one and we were 10, 15 yards off our own try-line,” he said.

“I think when you make errors on play five and you’re down in their half, like for example when Ryan (Ellis) went for the try and the referee adjudged it to be just short, you don’t mind having the ball over in them areas where, yes, on Sunday, we were having the ball more than 10, 15 yards off our own try-line and a good team like Rochdale will put you to the sword.

“The errors that we’re making are solely individual, really.

“There’s always an element to those individual errors why they happen and as a team, we can help that individual at the time, but no-one wants to make mistakes, but for me they’re always going to happen.

“It’s how you respond from it and as a person, it’s how you deal with it in that set of six after and we just need to be a little bit better.”

Forster admitted: “We all make mistakes. I’ll make mistakes in terms of interchanges and team selection, game plans, it all happens.

“So, as long as we put it behind us, we don’t dwell on it.

“We learn from mistakes, then we’ll be better for it.”

Crusaders are likely to go into Sunday’s match without Ryan Ellis, Toby Hughes and Owain Abel, but Jake Burns will be available for selection.

The weekend League One action gets underway tomorrow and unbeaten Oldham will return to the top of the standings if they can win by more than 22 points during their trip to Midlands Hurricanes.

Turning to Sunday and current front-runners Keighley Cougars head to Rochdale Hornets, while Anthony Murray’s Workington Town welcome Cornwall.