Harriers' first home friendly of the summer ended in defeat against Championship side Birmingham.

In front of a bumper crowd of nearly four thousand both teams gave their all in an entertaining first half that ended with Blues ahead thanks to Wes Thomas' 37th minute goal.

Harriers suffered an earlier setback when they lost Marvin Johnson to injury after 21 minutes, taken out by a late challenge by City's Neal Eardley just after he had forced Darren Randolph into a good save.

Birmingham needed just 27 seconds of the second half to double their advantage, Thomas firing past Danny Lewis to record his second of the game.  The heat of the blazing sunshine and a raft of substitutions led to the game losing its earlier intensity and the visitors took complete control of the encounter.

The scoring was completed after 73 minutes, substitute Clayton Donaldson stabbing the ball home.

Despite the result it was a good work out for Harriers although will probably learn more from the coming games against Shrewsbury and Cheltenham.