WORCESTER Norton were widely thought to be the team to beat this season after some crushing victories over other teams in the Worcester-shire League.

However, spirits were high for the most part on Saturday and visiting side Bromsgrove made more running, more interceptions and generally more effort in engineering goal scoring opportunities.

Unfortunately, Broms-grove should have converted more of these opportunities, but play remained solely of their own making in this league match

The first goal came early on from player of the match Claire Brookes, who did an impressive amount of running and defensive work.

Attackers Liz Fields, Christine Ashworth and Ang Gibson aided an all-out Bromsgrove attack and cut out many of the passing options from the Worcester defence.

As a result, Bromsgrove had the advantage of at least seven short corners throughout.

Of these, Nicky Bayliss scored from a strongly flicked ball but this was disallowed.

Further close calls came when Becky Southwell pulled a ball in the back of the net from a corner before the umpire called an earlier advantage, thus disallowing another lead.

With Worcester Norton equalising, there was further determination to pull the game back.

But time wasn't on the girls' side, despite commendable efforts from the likes of Erica Bond and Donna Mcgettigan.