Injury destroys KRFC's winning start.

With an injury ravaged squad, Knutsford headed to Prenton with no fewer than ten first team regular players missing. To make matters worse, two late call offs on the morning of the game meant that two of the starting fifteen were playing with significant injuries.

Nonetheless, the opposition can only beat what is in front of them, and for the first 20 minutes of the game the Knutsford team did not front up, whereas the Prenton lads were clearly up for a game against the joint league leaders. Poor tackling and a lack of communication between the players meant that Prenton were 24 points up within as many minutes.

Finally, Knutsford started to come alive and made a competition of the second part of the first half, with everyone picking their game up. In fact, Knutsford started to dominate in the loose and spent a lot of this period in the Prenton half. Despite this, the closest Knutsford came to scoring was with a Mooney penalty from long range which fell just short and the same man hit the post with a speculative drop goal shortly after.

Half time Prenton 24 Knutsford 0

The second half commenced much the same as the first with Prenton scoring an early try. This was enough to kick Knutsford into gear again, and once again they spent fifteen minutes pressuring the Prenton defence but with no end result.

As the makeshift Knutsford team tired, Prenton once again showed their class, running in 3 tries in quick succession to end the game with the final score of 50 points to nil for the home side.

Overall, this was a day to forget for the Knutsford boys, but some positives were taken from the game. A strong performance from both Dunkerley and Williams on their full debuts, a solid effort from Crawford at 13 and the return of Perry gives manager Todman some additional options for the upcoming games. Next week Knutsford travel to Parkonians in the Cheshire Plate, kick off 3pm.

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