HORWICH captain Brett Pelser admits he is delighted with how their season is progressing.

The South African is targeting a second-placed finish in the Premiership behind Walkden.

Professional Pelser helped maintain Horwich’s bid by taking five wickets in a seven-wicket win against relegation-threatened Daisy Hill.

They chased down 160 with more than 20 overs to spare at St James Street.

They are third and three points behind Farnworth, who host Walkden on the final day of the campaign.

Horwich have already won the Bolton League T20 and were yesterday tackling Farnworth in the Peter Stafford Trophy quarter-final.

“If you’d said at the start of the season ‘You’ll win the T20, you’ll finish second and get to the latter stages of the Peter Stafford’, I probably wouldn’t have believed you,” said Pelser.

“We’ve been honest as a club, and I don’t think this was the season for us to be pushing. We had a couple of new players come in, a couple leave us.

“Our sights are on maybe next year or the one after. That gives us time to build, to create a good team ethos.

“I think we’ve slightly overachieved.

“I saw an interesting stat last week that we’d scored the lowest aggregate runs as a team in the league.

“Seeing that, you think ‘Geez, how are we where we are?’

“It is a goal to finish second – it’s important we finish strongly.

“The good thing is that we know how far we’re off Walkden, so we can put things in place to close that gap. We’ve played them twice and seen how dominant they’ve been.

“It’s our batting that needs to improve. Our bowling can knock anyone over.

“It’s about putting in some plans over the winter, maybe re-jigging the order a bit, a few new tactics.”

Horwich were missing key fast bowler Liam Bones through injury, with pro Pelser proving an able replacement with 5-44 from 17.2 overs of medium pacers.

He shared the new ball with Lewis Haydock, who took three wickets. Phil Ingram added two as the hosts were bowled out for 159.

In reply, Dan Naylor and Tom Billington killed the game off with an opening stand of 107 inside 21 overs, posting 67 and 34 respectively.

“We needed that win,” said Pelser. “We’ve had a couple of tough weekends, so to get back to winning ways was good.

“The scorecard suggests it was straightforward, but it didn’t feel like that. Daisy Hill put up a really good fight.

“Putting 160 on was going to be a tough chase if they started well with the ball. But Tom and Danny batted beautifully and shared a 100-run partnership. As soon as that happens, you lose a bit of momentum as a fielding side.

“Not having Liam was a bit of a blow. I think he’s really battling with his Achilles. He struggled last weekend and messaged me in the morning and said ‘I just need an extra week to be ready’.

“It was a bit lucky for me! When you bowl enough overs, you’ll eventually get a wicket or two.”