Shrewsbury floored on first day

It was a disappointing opening for Shrewsbury, who kicked their campaign off a week ahead of the rest of the sides in the Midlands leagues .

Prop Neil Williams is getting married next week and most of the rest of the first team squad will be attending, with the best man and a couple of the ushers also coming out of the playing staff.

And league officials took a sympathetic stance on the situation, bringing their opening game with Sandbach forward a week.

Not that it did them much good as they turned in an ultimately disappointing performance to make their now customary slow start.

Trailing to one try at the break, they quickly slipped further behind in the second half before Steve Owen brought them back into it with a try for the visitors off a driving maul from a line-out.

That might have signalled a comeback, but it was Sandbach who rallied with three more tries in the final 20 minutes to wrap up the points.

"In the first half we played reasonably well even though we were 5-0 down," said fly-half Mattie Morris. "We did very well playing uphill against the wind in pretty bad conditions.

"We'd done some research and found out they were normally a forward-orientated side but they had some useful backs as well.

"They're a side I feel we could have beaten on our day but we just seemed to lose it in the second half.

"We've had a slow start for the last couple of years and we didn't want that to happen this year so we'll certainly try to put it right in our next game in two weeks."

By Chris Hudson