Lichfield had been top of the division after beating Dudley Kingswinford a month ago, but the heavy rain in February has seen several fixtures cancelled, giving Kenilworth the opportunity to leap-frog both Dudley and Lichfield and go top of the league.

The match started well for the Lichfield boys, a runaway try in 30 seconds from Greg Massey followed up by a Sam Benson push over gave Lichfield a 12 points cushion and it looked like it was back to business as usual.

The boys not playing together for the best part of a month started to show, handling errors were rife and indiscipline would eat into the lead they had created, a yellow card for captain Charlie Milner in the first-half and Josh Machin in the second allowed Kenilworth to score several tries unanswered, with the indiscipline punished by easily kickable penalties.

It wasn’t a bad performance from the Lichfield team, threatening the Kenilworth try-line several times, but the hunger to complete in the last 22 seemed to dog the play, alongside Mr Ounsley of Yorkshire’s ubiquitous whistle.

Head coach, Dan Hemingway ‘A disappointing result in the end but all credit to Kenilworth who kept their intensity for the full 80 minutes and made some fantastic tackles in the wide channels in particular.’

‘We felt that we started strongly and could of had another couple of scores in the first half, unfortunately in the second half the recent break showed. We looked like a side who hasn’t played in 3 weeks and our physicality in particular dropped.’

‘Well done to Kenilworth, and it sets up an exciting last few weeks of the season.’

Lichfield drop to 3rd in the division after Dudley put pay to Newbold.

Lichfield’s next game is home to Kidderminster on the 7th March.