FROME Town were pegged back as they secured a 1-1 draw away to Merthyr Town on Tuesday night.

An early goal from Frome’s James Fitzgibbon was cancelled out on the stroke of half time by Merthyr’s Jarrad Wright.

With all the local matches cancelled on Saturday, Frome were grateful to Writhlington School for allowing a hastily arranged friendly against Shepton Mallet to go ahead on the school’s 3G pitch in preparation for this trip to Merthyr, where even the benefits of their 3G pitch had failed to prevent the postponement of Merthyr’s last match.

The match started as a competitive and fast paced game, but the early stages provided no goal mouth action until the 18th minute when Frome took the lead with their first real attack.

A superb deep cross from Sam Teale was headed home at the far post by James Fitzgibbon for his first goal for the club.

Merthyr went very close to equalising immediately after as a cross from the right wing just flicked off the head of Connor Roberts.

The resulting corner found the head of former Robin Rhys Baggridge, who headed wide.

Frome were pressing and closing down well during the first half but, in the 45th minute, Merthyr were back level as a free kick from the half way line was drilled in and a powerful header from Jarrad Wright found the top corner as he headed it back across Darren Chitty’s goal.

The second half was more of the same, with both sides tending to cancel each other out in midfield, and Chitty made his first real save of the match in the 75th minute as a Ryan Prosser shot, following a corner, took a deflection and was heading low into the far corner until it was pushed away by the Frome keeper.

As the match moved towards the final whistle, Frome tended to have the better of things with possession and territory but despite having several corners in quick succession, they couldn’t find a way past the home defence and the 1-1 scoreline was the same as the match at Frome earlier in the season.