Historic Win for Wirral at Upper Park

With Wirral qualifying for the Cheshire Cup this season their quarter final tie was away to Birkenhead Park (BP), where none of the older members could recall Wirral achieving a win.
Wirral introduced two new players to the team having joined from Wallasey via New Brighton, these being Keith Mahon (no 8) and Paul Lewis (Front/Second row). The team was J. Annetts, M. Loon, C. Speed, S. Edgar, C. Burrows, D. Harvey, J. Haigh, M. Brown, J. Green, and C. Hughes. R. Stead (captain), P. Lewis, J. Adnams, R. Pearl and K. Mahon. The substitutes were, J. Yarker, R. Higginson, T. Hodgson, M. Warren and C. Tyson. There was no restriction on the number of substitutions and for the purpose of this report no details of these will be reported given the number involved. Both teams were without regular first team players.

Wirral had the advantage of the strong wind in the first half and after 5 minutes took the lead with a DANNY HARVEY penalty and doubled their lead with another from the same player 6 minutes later. The pressure was coming from the Wirral side and almost scored when JOE ADNAMS charged down a clearance kick only for the ball to cross the dead ball line before he could touch down.

BP were making progress down the blind side when a pass was intercepted by CHRIS SPEED who made some 40 yards who drew the full back before putting in MATT LOON who ran unopposed to the try line to score close to the corner flag, the try was not converted. 0-11 (25 mins). The lead was extended to 0-14 with another DAN HARVEY penalty following foul play by a BP player - Greg Hughes and a yellow card followed. A couple of minutes later, CHRIS TYSON was sin binned for not being 10 m back from a penalty kick taken quickly by BP.

In the 39th minute, BP got on the score sheet with a penalty from in front of the posts.

With the wind behind them it was expected that BP would kick long but in the first few minutes of the second half it was Wirral who applied the pressure, first missing a kickable penalty and then having a JIMMY ANNETTS try disallowed for crossing. BP came more into the game as they gained ground in the Wirral half, on one occasion a rolling maul went some 30m only for the ball to be dropped close to the line. BP continued to make progress but the Wirral defence stood firm and forced BP into errors.

The most crucial point of the game came in the 63rd minute when Wirral attacked the blind side some 45m out. The ball eventually came out to JULIAN HAIGH, now playing on the wing, close to the touchline. He had to come inside where he beat two players and then went on an arcing run to beat the defence and score some 20m from the posts. The conversion was missed. Both teams were looking to attack and a DAN HARVEY break saw a kick over the BP defence and with the defence almost beaten just failed to collect the ball on the bounce. With time running out, BP tried to break through the Wirral defence which was not broken until the 79th minute when a penalty gave them good field position and Shaun Woof eventually forced his way over the Wirral line, the try was converted by Dave Hall and with that referee Tim Smith called time.

This was an historic victory in which the Wirral team successfully carried out the tactics engineered by the new joint coaching team of Andy McKinney and Matt Cairns.

Next week sees the start of the league fixtures and we open up with a home game against Kendal recently relegated from National League 3 North. The team would welcome the same large support as that enjoyed at BP today.