Wirral again made changes for this clash with the unbeaten league leaders, another different centre combination of Ollie Atkinson and Danny Harvey was featured, Darren Halstead came in at fullback, Richard Macmillan retained his right wing place. In the pack Chris Tyson came back into the second row, with Paul Sherlock on the bench along with Jack Quinn and Martin McNeil.

AK played with the advantage of the cross wind in the first half.

From the early exchanges it was evident that both defences were on top and on 10 mins AK missed a kickable penalty. They were awarded another penalty a couple of mins later only for this to be reversed and Wirral had their first opportunity to score through Danny Harvey from 30m out and 15m in from touch but the attempt went just wide. Even at this early stage there had been a number of penalties in favour of Wirral with one of the AK props receiving a number of lectures but no further sanction.

On 18mins with AK coming more into the game they had possession in the Wirral 20m area and further progress saw AK with a number of scrums 5m from the Wirral line. Wirral's resilient defence held out with AK players being held up over the line on two scoring attempts, Wirral eventually cleared.

Wirral had another kickable penalty after 26 mins from a similar position as their earlier chance but again just missed, a couple of minutes later AK had an excellent chance to open the scoring from in front of the posts from 20m but this was missed on the left.

In the last 10mins of the half, Wirral began to dominate with play mainly in the area 30m from the AK line but could not break through the last line of defence, thus half time came with a 0 -0 score line.

Ten mins into the second half, Wirral made their first substitution with Jack Quinn coming on for Steve Pendergast.

AK were now looking to counter attack from kicks not reaching touch and on one occasion made good ground only for the final pass to have been forward as seen by the larger than average crowd. On another of these attacks, leading Wirral try scorer, Tim Hodson made a strong tackle on the AK player but it was deemed by the referee to be late and Hodson went to the sin bin on 25 mins. From the penalty awarded play was now in the Wirral 20m area and from another penalty opportunity with a different kicker the chance for AK to score was again missed.

Wirral themselves had the opportunity to take the lead with a difficult penalty attempt, from 35m out, 5m in from touch and kicking into the cross wind. The kick just shaved the left hand post, an excellent attempt from Sam Broadbent.

With time running out, AK were kicking the ball downfield to get the territory and from open play their outstanding full back broke the deadlock with a drop kick from 25m out and 3 minutes later the lead was doubled to 6-0, when the third AK penalty taker, the centre managed to score a penalty from 30m out. With the second row of AK being sin binned, AK were looking to kick long downfield leaving Wirral to counter attack but it was to no avail and in the 46th minute of the second half, a penalty was awarded to AK who again scored to leave the score at 9-0 to the visitors and denying Wirral a losing bonus point.

Whilst AK had the heavier pack and territorial advantage, the officials of AK felt they had "stolen" the game and a draw would have been a fair result, even more galling was the fact that Wirral were denied a losing bonus point which they deserved given the courageous display from the young Wirral team. Wirral have played well against the leading teams to date and during the next few weeks have further sterner tests.

Richard McNeil