On an almost Spring like January afternoon Broughton Park continued their quest for promotion by beating Aspull and confirming top spot in the league. At times during the game Park were a mixture of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The good aspects of Parks play resulted in 5 tries, the bad resulted in long periods of error strewn rugby and the ugly was Parks inability to close out the game when leading 17pts to nil after 20mins.

Aspull kicked off and were soon rewarded with a penalty which they failed to convert into points. After only 3 minutes a speculative pass from the Aspull fly half was gleefully intercepted by man of the match Jon Knight, who quickly transferred the ball to Tom Foden to streak 50m, unopposed, to score under the posts. Seven nil to Park was quickly increased when, after Park had forced the Aspull defence into giving away a penalty 5m from the line, Adam Middlehurst received the ball out wide to score, after good work from Mark Poole who created the try scoring opportunity.

20mins into the 1st half Park went further ahead when the dominant Park forwards secured the ball and stretched the Aspull defence to allow Shaun Stirrup to feed Simon Verbickas who drew his man and gave Jon Knight the simplest walk in to score in the corner.

This was rugby at its best with the Park forwards gaining good, quick ball for the backs to exploit. However it was not to last as for the next 50 mins. Aspull played to their maximum and forced their way back into the game. Park began to make unforced errors and give away penalties and from one of these penalties, after 30 mins. Aspull scored their solitary try. Instead of taking a kick for goal, which would have been a simple 3 points, Aspull gambled and Park were left scrambling when Hugh Bloor, the Aspull prop, received the ball from the quickly taken penalty and crashed over to score.

At the start of the 2nd half Aspull played their best rugby but were only rewarded with 3pts to make the score 17 - 8. Gradually Park began to exert themselves and began to string together a few moves which forced Aspull back and this pressure inevitably lead to Park finishing off the game with 2 more tries in the final 10 mins.

First Shaun Stirrup scored his first try of the season when Mark Poole burst through the Aspull defence only to have the ball stripped out of his grasp, the ball was bouncing around over the try line and Stirrup was the fist to react and score the try.

In the final minute of the game, with the Park pack in total control, a series of attacks were mounted which finally resulted in Tom Chappell scoring in the corner after Tom Foden and Simon Verbickas combined to put the winger in unopposed at the corner.

Parks next game is away against second place Wilmslow next weekend. The game is not a must win game but victory to Park would go a long way to secure the automatic promotion spot and with a fully fit squad to pick from Park go into the game with belief and confidence.

- David Walsh, 1st XV Manager Broughton Park