UPTON seconds took on Droitwich in a merit table match on Saturday.

UPTON II 11 pts, DROITWICH II 3pts

The pitch was fine, the weather was sunny, the internationals were on and Upton were forced to draw on four first team squad members and veteran Nigel Banwell, who was called into the front row at the last minute, to make up the team from a club that is desperately short of three quarters, mainly through injuries.

The warm up session got the tactics and calls sorted and Upton were straight onto the attack putting their much bigger opponents under pressure that they could not withstand and Mark Tether opened the scoring with a penalty kick after five minutes.

After 15 minutes Droitwich made their first foray into Upton's 22 when they brought their useful looking backs more into the game and then levelled the scores with a penalty kick from Hobbs.

It was all Upton now as they maintained the pressure with attacks coming from both forwards and backs but with dropped passes and desperate tackling there were no further scores in the first half.

At half time Upton decided to keep the ball tight and play more to their strength, that was with the pack. Upton soaked up the early pressure at the restart from a revitalised Droitwich team and then again gained superiority through powerful mauling and in the set scrums, where debutant Guy Young showed his prowess by continually taking the ball against the head even when it was being fed into the Droitwich second row!

Despite all this procession the backs could not penetrate so the pack took matters even more into their hands, by keeping the ball even tighter and eventually, after a series of driving mauls, worked their way up close to the Droitwich line where John Ward drove over for a try and a scoreline of 8-3

Upton soon increased their lead further with another Tether penalty to leave the final score at 11-3.

Tomorrow (Saturday) Upton Second XV entertain Bromyard in a re-arranged Merit Table match.