Lymm 27, Wirral 27

WIRRAL travelled to Lymm for their "derby match" and came away with a draw despite leading for most of the game.

Playing up the slope and against the breeze it was Wirral who took the initiative straight from the kick off and put the home side under pressure to the extent that Lymm had a player sin-binned as early as the eighth minute when he prevented Wirral from possibly scoring.

In the 16th minute, Wirral took the lead when a weaving run by James Annetts split the Lymm defence to score under the posts and he converted his own try.

Six minutes later Wirral doubled their lead when a bout of sharp passing saw Rob Pearl run in from 35m to score under the posts, again converted- 0-14.

Lymm replied with a penalty from Cormac Nolan and this was followed by a deft grubber kick behind the Wirral defence which Richard McEvoy collected and scored near the posts and converted to reduce the Wirral lead to 10-14.

Five minutes before half-time quick passing down the line saw Chris Speed cross in the corner to leave the score at half-time 10-19.

Three minutes into the second half, Lymm fly half intercepted a pass and raced 70m unopposed to score under the posts and then 10 minutes later another interception by Joe Senior led to another long distance try to give the home side a 24-19 lead.

From the kick off, Lymm failed to collect and from the resultant line out, the Wirral second row, Matt Dalton caught and drove through the Lymm line out and race in from 20m to score in the corner, the conversion was missed to leave the score at 24 each.

Minutes later Lymm were down to 13 players for five minutes as two players were sin binned but unfortunately Wirral could not take advantage, as the wrong options were taken.

An exchange of penalties left the score at 27 all and in the final minutes Wirral were pressing for the winning score but time eventually ran out.

This was a game which Wirral should have won easily but for the two interceptions which cost them 14 points; as a result Wirral collected three points by virtue of scoring four tries as opposed to two points for Lymm.