David Morton reports-

Depleted by injury to a number of key players, Carlisle were reduced to a seventeen man squad when Barry Earl pulled up during the warm up, and had to sit the match out from the bench. However,James Armiger who replaced him, had the joy of adding a try with minutes of the game remaining.

Carlisle set off a great pace in the early minutes of the clash with the league leaders, and certainly looked as though they meant business;causing a few tremors in the visiting defence.

Fly half Glen Weightman opened his account with a penalty after seven minutes,but this was followed by relentless Wirral pressure and Carlisle found themselves in arrears from a brace of converted tries on the fifteen minutes mark.

On the basis that attack if the best form of defence, Carlisle to their credit, took the game to the pace setters, but the best they could muster before the break was another Weightman penalty. Centre Jared Stewart ended his contribution come the interval with a dislocated shoulder.

Re- organised after the break, Carlisle kept plugging away and on forty nine minutes lock, Ryan Feeney stormed over for a fine try with Weightman adding the extras to close the game to a point. They couldn't hang on though and within three minutes they allowed Wirral the luxury of another converted try, with another coming on sixty five minutes, and an unconverted touch down on seventy one minutes.

The game looked to have stretched away from Carlisle, but the lads had other ideas, keeping the Merseyside defence on their mettle to thwart some marauding attacks. Carlisle made their efforts count though with tries coming on thirty five minutes from hooker Ally Randal, and one with a couple of minutes to go from wingman James Armiger and Weightman accepted the conversion points with ease.

The determined flourish came just too late though. Wirral would be glad to hear the final whistle because in the dying embers of the game, it was Carlisle who were in the ascendency and had the injury time been played out to the clock, the home side could have well have done more damage.

Carlisle are putting enough effort into their game, the forwards working hard for possession, but invariably a lack of imagination, craft and guile, let them down in their final approach.