North Petherton began the new season on Saturday afternoon with First and Second Team warm-up matches at home against Wellington. Having enjoyed having good numbers at training during August, the end of the Cricket season and various work and holiday committments left Petherton short of players against strong opposition.

Pethy's First's faired reasonably well, losing 24-15. After recovering from a very poor start when they conceded a try within the first five minutes, they played some good rugby during the middle of the match and scored three tries to the visitors four. The scorers for Petherton were Captain Lloyd Williams, Ben Williams and Matt Brown.

It was an up and down game for the hosts, the pack played well with several new faces included, although the back line did not quite fire on all cylinders. However, it was a useful workout for the players and the fitness of the team was good after a hard pre-season that began in June. There will be plenty to work on before Pethy's first competitive match of the season in the EDF Vase this coming Saturday away at Burnham-On-Sea. They have a further testing pre-season game at home on Wednesday evening against Western Counties side Minehead to sharpen up.

Unfortunately it was a different story for the Seconds, who took to the field with a hastily arranged team due to the number of players missing and called up to the First Team. They were also without injured Captain Larry Steward, and playing against a side a division higher than them, they struggled to contain the excellent running and off-loading play of their Wellington counterparts.

After a slow start gifted the visitors two easy tries, Pethy enjoyed their best spell of the match, utilising the powerful running of Ben Harvey and Mike Coles to get near the try-line before the ball was knocked on. The superior speed of the Wellington forwards at the breakdown meant that Pethy could not string the phases together and they turned the ball over too often. When they had the ball, Wellington always looked dangerous, and they constantly exploited some poorly positioned defence to run in tries on a frequent basis, eventually winning 77-0.

Whilst there were not many positives for the Seconds to take from this match, it was a useful workout ahead of their first league match on Saturday, and it was against opposition a standard above what they will face this season.