Seemingly home and hosed in the North One West title race, Carlisle Rugby Club have started to wobble.

A 24-15 home defeat to their nearest rivals, Blackburn, cut their lead to six points – almost a third of what it had been.

Blackburn have been in good form and they were a side determined to reduce the gap between themselves and the league leaders.

After a cautious opening 10 minutes, Blackburn sparked the game into life as they slowly built pressure, going through the phases.

They finally crossed the Carlisle try-line after 14 minutes for an unconverted try.

This sparked Carlisle into action and a line-out drive gave them territory, which was further increased when Blackburn committed a penalty.

From this point, Carlisle camped themselves in the Blackburn half, and after too many penalties, despite warnings from the referee, Blackburn lost their tight-head prop to the bin.

There then followed a sustained period of Carlisle pressure within the 22, which only desperate defending by the visitors, kept their hosts at bay.

Blackburn could consider themselves lucky they didn’t lose a second player as the penalty count increased significantly in their 22.

Despite all this possession, Carlisle just couldn’t find a way through the Blackburn defence as they continued to put bodies between Carlisle and their try-line.

With five minutes to go before half-time, Carlisle had a series of scrum penalties, and might well feel aggrieved that this didn’t result in further action by the referee.

Then, from the back of a scrum on the right, Grant Connon found some space in front of himself, and wrong-footing one defender, crashed through two others over the line, only for the referee to adjudge him held up.

With Carlisle retaining possession at the scrum, they kept turning the screw on the Blackburn defence.

Finally, they got just reward for all that possession as the ball was spread right and a tiring Blackburn defence couldn’t get across quick enough to stop Connon feeding winger Ben Littleton to fly over in the corner. The half ended 5-5.

The home support could have had some hope of Carlisle building on that momentum from the first half.

However, from the restart, a misfielded ball handed possession to the visitors and they quickly went through the phases to go through for a converted try.

Connon had a chance to cut the lead six minutes later as Blackburn were caught offside and, from 30 metres, he obliged.

It took Blackburn only a further five minutes to score again as a Carlisle penalty infringement was punished with a five-metre line-out, and crash ball through the home defence pushed their lead to 17-8.

Carlisle gave themselves some hope on 63 minutes as a Blackburn penalty infringement was rewarded by a five-metre line-out catch and drive, which turned and wove its way across the visitors whitewash, giving centre Dan Holmes the chance to dive over for Carlisle’s second converted try, reducing the gap to just two points.

All that good work was quickly undone, though, as Blackburn recovered the ball from the restart, spread the ball wide, and a clever kick through behind the defence gave the visitors the opportunity to claim their fourth and bonus-point try which was converted on 65 minutes.

Try though they might, Carlisle couldn’t find another opportunity to close the gap, despite having further territorial advantage inside the Blackburn 22 for much of the rest of the half.

The Blackburn defence was solid and resisted any attempt by Carlisle to get over the line, though they came close on a few occasions.