As in the Weymouth clash City began strongly and with just three minutes on the clock created a great chance to take the lead. The consistently excellent Milsom played a neat one-two with Foster to give the latter a shooting opportunity. He elected to try for accuracy, rather than power, and his shot was comfortably held by Bowling. A couple of minutes later another good build-up ended with Gosling firing narrowly wide, but this signalled the end of their good spell and the Poppies began to gain the upper hand. Hervin had to be alert after 15 minutes to tip an optimistic 35-yard effort from Norman over the bar. With 24 minutes gone Kettering were handed an excellent opening when a high boot by Thorne gave them an indirect free-kick just eight yards out. The kick was laid off to Norman but his effort was charged down by a mass of black and white striped bodies. With both sides now struggling to produce anything resembling attractive football it was either going to take a mistake or a moment of brilliance to break the deadlock and before the interval City almost suffered one of each. First Hervin came for, but got nowhere near, a Fear free-kick, only for Perkins to head well over, and then a run by Diuk left three City defenders trailing but his cross failed to find a teammate and the danger passed. In between Powell fired a free-kick straight at Bowling but this was a rare threat on the home goal.

The break saw Pridham replace the ineffectual Hopkins with Mills but the pattern of the game changed little, City still content to sit back and absorb what little threat Kettering could produce. In fact, the closest they came to breaching City's defence was following another error by Hervin. His attempted clearance struck Thorne and fell to Watkins. He choose to centre the ball to Collins rather than go for goal himself and his weak shot was easily blocked by Towler. This was after 61 minutes and five minutes later Hervin redeemed himself, tipping McNamara's header over the bar. Kettering were clearly fast running out of ideas now and Pridham threw on Allison and Hughes in a late effort to snatch an unlikely victory. However, despite forcing a number of promising positions too often the final ball was poor, in particular Powell and Wyatt wasted a couple of free-kicks, and only two shots from Mills ever threatened Bowling's goal.