Penrith Rugby Club won their "Match of the Day" in North One West, beating Birkenhead Park 37-30 at Winters Park.

But, for Keswick, the search for the first point of the season goes on after they lost 52-12 at home to Northwich.

Penrith’s match followed the pattern of many of the games between the two clubs, with the cut and thrust of the home three-quarters up against the strength and drive of the visitors’ combative pack.

It was the visitors who got off to the better start and went ahead in the first 10 minutes after a converted try.

Penrith did not take long to hit back, though, and had a purple patch of 10 minutes where they scored four tries.

Jay Rossi scored the first two and he was followed over by two other backs in Brook Birley and Olly Gutteridge.

The visitors then hit back with a converted try after a well-worked catch and drive at a line-out.

But the home side added a penalty through their new place-kicker, prop Will Morgan, before Park scored again to trail 27-19 at half-time.

After the visitors kicked an early penalty, Birley raced over for his second try to extend the Penrith lead to 10 points.

When the visitors scored another try, the lead was down to five, going into the last quarter. But nerves were settled a little when Fraser Nicolson went over for the final Penrith try.

In the dying seconds, when Park were awarded a penalty in front of the sticks, their head coach marched on to the field with the kicking tee and the penalty went over to earn them a losing bonus-point to go with their four-try bonus-point.

Meanwhile just under half of Keswick’s senior squad were unavailable through injury, and a number of younger and less experienced players stepped up against Northwich.

A good line-out early on saw Northwich run the ball right for a converted try on three minutes.

That early running with the ball in hand became a feature of the Northwich play, forcing Keswick to defend for long periods.

Keswick found the set-pieces difficult to defend, consequently spending much of the first quarter of the game in their own half.

Despite the pressure, Keswick held out until the 30th minute when, with a penalty advantage at a scrum in the home 22, Northwich were able to cross to double their lead.

The Keswick defence coped well overall in dealing with the hard-running of the Northwich backs, but conceded two more tries before the break and trailed 26-0.

Four minutes into the second half, Keswick opened their account. A charge down and five-metre scrum was run right for Ryan Weir to score an unconverted try.

The first 10 minutes of the second half were played mainly in Northwich’s 22, but Keswick couldn’t get over the line.

On 59 minutes, Keswick’s second-half clean sheet ended when Northwich ran a penalty and scored an unconverted try.

It was, however, a better showing from Keswick in the second half and they went close on a couple of occasions before Northwich scored a converted try on 66 minutes.

Four minutes later, the lively backs ran through a gap in the Keswick defence for a converted try to extend their lead to 45-5.

Not giving up, Keswick attacked from the restart. Harry Vaillant made another good run before offloading to Joe Bagnall who, despite being tap tackled, made it to the line for a try, converted by Lewis Bell.

However Northwich weren’t finished and, with the last move of the game, they created an overlap again for a final converted try.