UPTON found a strange pitch for this North Midlands One match in Redditch on Saturday - a dry firm one.

REDDITCH 7pts, UPTON 0

Usually the matches against the 'Blues' are at times in the season when there has been a great deal of wet weather and the sloping pitch has had areas of 'difficulties'.

Upton were again forced to play with a change in personnel due to the usual illness, injuries, holidays and work commitments.

During the first half Redditch had two unsuccessful penalty kicks playing down the slope whilst Upton had a try disallowed from a pushover attempt and Max Edwards was ushered into touch just a metre short.

The rest of the play went up and down and across the field after a number of dropped passes, lost possession and clearance kicks with Upton's forwards just getting the upper hand in the forward battle but it remained scoreless.

The second half was very much the same as the first between these two evenly matched sides and it appeared that one score was probably going to be enough.

After 60 minutes the first chance fell to Upton but the usual accuracy of Rob Heeley's boot was missing as he pulled a penalty kick wide of the posts.

From the 22 metre restart, Redditch worked their way back up to Upton's 22 from where they recycled the ball to their backs. Centre Barnes evaded his tackler and ran through to score a try which he duly converted, from in front the posts, for 7-0.

Upton brought on fresh legs and upped the tempo for the last quarter but despite several near misses they succumbed to their second league defeat.

It was always thought it was going to be a hard division and with the visit of Veseyans tomorrow (Saturday) there are no easy matches in sight.