NORTHWICH threw everything but the kitchen sink at Aspull, but still failed to register their first league points of the campaign.

They have now narrowly lost all three games and only Warrington keep them off the bottom of the league.

Despite this, coach Chris Chudleigh remains optimistic and firmly believes he commands a squad that will safely retain their membership of South Lancs and Cheshire One.

There have been no 60-0 batterings and with a little more composure and better finishing Northwich could have been moving into October undefeated.

They completely dominated an average Aspull outfit who were relegated at the end of last season.

Although Northwich were without their centre partnership of Steve Campbell (holiday) and Chris Dale (injured), they did more than enough to come away with two points.

Time and again, in both halves, they got to within a metre or two of the Aspull try line and either gave away a penalty, took the wrong option or simply failed to finish off their superiority.

Aspull with the wind at their backs in the first half rarely ventured into Northwich territory, but on two occasions they managed to score against the run of play.

First, an individual try by Geoff Gavin was converted by John Linnaker and then Liam Reeve kicked a penalty when a Northwich player deliberately pulled down a maul.

Constant Northwich pressure failed to secure a single first half point and their effort was summed up when they were awarded a penalty on the Aspull try line and instead of opting for a scrum and driving over they took a tap penalty and dropped the ball.

With the wind behind them and only 10 points down Northwich had everything to play for in a second half that became all too predictable.

The Northwich pack were rampant and continuously bombarded the Aspull line.

Graham Robinson, Rob Heath and John Brotherton were magnificent going forward with the ball.

Instead of then playing the ball wide the Northwich forwards constantly ran into the solid Aspull defence.

With 10 minutes to go centre Andy Allen broke the second half stalemate and broke through three tackles to score a well deserved try.

Andy Chubb missed what should have been an easy conversion, but with 10 minutes remaining the Northwich players looked strong enough to win the match.

They maintained the pressure and turned the screw but they could not break down the Aspull defence.

This weekend Northwich take on Hoylake at Moss Farm.