THERE was nothing to choose between these two teams on a quagmire of a pitch last Sunday.

OLD HALESONIANS 7pts, MALVERN U15S 7pts

The home team paid Malvern the compliment of rating this as their key game of the season, and there was plenty of passion and skill about their early play. But it was hard for both sides to extricate themselves from a cloying morass in the middle of the field.

Finally, after a long and exhausting stalemate, Old Halesonians made the pressure tell with a try under the posts following a sequence of penalties near the visitors' line

A change of tactics in the second period made more effective use of the appaling conditions. When the breakthrough finally came it was a scrappy affair, Matt Tighe followed up a charged-down kick and then converted his own try.