Once again, after a half-hearted warm up and a series of missed tackles, Essington soon found themselves 3 – 0 down. Bloxwich exerted a lot more pressure for the next 15 minutes or so but failed to turn this into further points.
Finally, through a series of handling errors by the Bloxwich backs, Essington started to exert a bit of pressure of their own. A nice switch between the centres, saw captain Graham Smith stopped inches short of the line. A penalty resulted, quickly taken by Paul Cowmeadow, who crashed over for a try, converted by Jack Lynch. Bloxwich pegged back the score from a penalty, but Essington managed to hold out to take a 7 – 6 half time lead.
In the second half, Essington had a lot more ball, Bloxwich having to concede a series of penalties to keep them out. Two of these were successfully converted by Jack Lynch to give Essington a 13 – 6 lead.
Bloxwich began to come more into the game as the Essington pack tired, and with 10 minutes to go scored a push over try, which was not converted, to make the score 13 – 11.
Essington managed to hold out until the last play of the game when Bloxwich were awarded a penalty. Fortunately for Essington the kick was missed, so they gained their first Merit table win this season.
Man of the match went to JJ Gallagher.