Encouraging start to the season for the Ladies

Following the lessons learnt from our pre-season against Wymondham, the team has been working hard on their defence and ball retention. So the objective in our first League match was to keep a clean sheet and minimise turn-overs... oh and to win!

Lakenham Hewett is clearly a revitalised team with many new players and for the first 20 minutes we struggled to make any decisive breakthroughs - despite retaining possession for the majority of the period. Finally we made headway deep in to their 22 and after being held up over the line, Marj's No.8 pick-up from the resulting scrum was again held up over the line in the corner - but fortunately a quick thinking Alex ripped the ball from the skirmish and dotted it down.

The rest of the first half was much the same. We were camped on their line several more times but unable to score - a combination of "white line fever" and stoic defence from the opposition. Both sides were yellow carded for high tackles and we were beginning to lose the ref with numerous other penalty infringements. Finally, Marj was yellowed for over enthusiastically helping the ref with his decision making!

We were successfully making the hard yards up the middle - especially via Lorraine who was on fire on her return to rugby - and we were drawing in the defenders but we were not taking advantage of the resulting overlaps. So the focus of the half time chat was spreading the ball wide and reducing after a few phases and reducing the penalty count.

After 10 minutes of relatively equal possession at the start of the second half, Lakenham Hewett mounted a sustained attack in our 22 and for the next 10 minutes we were desperately defending our line. Wave upon wave of attacks were unable to break our defence whether route one or out wider. We retained our defensive structure throughout and our line speed and tackling kept them behind the gain line and eventually started to push them back. Virtually the whole team were involved at some point but Fran's chop tackles were particularly noteworthy.

Finally, we turned the ball over and Chantelle broke the deadlock by simply running out wide and around the opposition to score. 5 minutes later she did the same again. Unfortunately, with our regular kicker away none of the tries were converted so we were definitely not in the clear yet.

Lakenham Hewett only had 15 players and lost 2 to injury during the second half and we had to match numbers. Their defensive efforts remained resolute and our centres were continually being brought down as we attempted to spin the ball out wide - until finally they both broke through, first Jay who scored under the posts and then Bev in the corner.

Final score 25-0. Not nearly as many points as we could have scored but a bonus point win and a very satisfy clean sheet. Job done!