ROCK bottom Rishton are keeping their heads up and their spirits high, no matter what the rest of the Lancashire League season throws at them.

The Blackburn Road side have been cast adrift, seemingly without a life jacket, after losing the first seven games of the season and picking up just six points.

And after tomorrow's visit to Nelson the next port of call for the sinking ship is Accrington, the side one place above them, on Sunday.

The sticking point for Rishton is that while Accrington are the closest team to them, the gap is 23 points, already an ominous chasm to fill in the first week of June.

And while Rishton skipper Jonathan Dobson believes things can turn round, he accepts that the Accrington game gives him the perfect opportunity to set the wheels of change in motion.

"We're not giving up because we want to get a win under our belts and are still confident," said Dobson.

"It's a big weekend because Accrington are second from bottom so it's our best chance yet of a win. But we need to get rid of their pro early to be in with a good shout.

"I hope we can raise our game a bit more as they will be confident after beating Bacup and then running them close in the cup."

While results have gone against Rishton, Dobson believes the real problems were rooted at the start of the season when Peter Sleep and Russ Whalley departed for the Ribblesdale League.

New pro Rob Nicol, from New Zealand, scored 93 in his second game, but the 19-year-old hasn't come close to emulating this.

The real bright spot so far has been Darren Eccles, who is starting to shine in the spotlight of the Lancashire League after making the considerable step up from Chorley and District League side Hoghton.

In last week's defeat against East Lancs, Eccles smashed 60 from 118 balls, but his side were skittled out for 140.

Dobson said: "Darren has done better than we thought and he did well to get his first 50.

"Scott Greaves is our senior bowler and bowled very well, but the others are struggling.

"It's been a big step up for most of them, who are not used to the standard of play and facing professionals week in, week out.

"In all, over the past two years we've lost eight players, and it has a knock-on effect. The second team is now very young and we've only really got a squad of 13 to choose from.

"Rob Nicol is only 19 himself, but we need him to get used to the conditions a bit more.

"He came with a record of bowling off spin rather than medium pace so we'll try to get him on a bit quicker with that now the wickets have got a bit drier."

In Rishton's last two defeats, against East Lancs and Church, they have surrendered meekly with paltry team totals.

But Dobson is hoping they can recapture the form they showed earlier in the season when they almost broke their duck.

He added: "The third game, against Colne, was our best so far. It was slow-scoring and we made 120 then had them at 90-odd for eight before they knocked them off.

"We kept Todmorden down to a gettable score but we batted poorly, and recently we've just got worse.

"I don't know whether it's a case of confidence betting knocked by the defeats or whether we're not putting enough work in.

"We need to be batting for 50 overs and we haven't been doing that, and we've been dropping a lot of catches."

Meanwhile, Accrington's weekend begins tomorrow at home to Lowerhouse in a set of rescheduled fixtures.