FRFC Ladies stay top of the Series!

The penultimate event in the Hampshire Women’s Touch Rugby Series took place at Fareham Heathens RFC. It was the club’s 40th anniversary and so the club was in full celebrations throughout the day, with mini and junior presentations in the mornings and then the senior players playing each other after the Women’s Touch Rugby.

The team were nervous and feeling the pressure of ensuring we kept the top position in the series. There were five teams competing today: Fareham, United Services Portsmouth (USP), Fordingbridge, Andover and Farnborough, so each team had four games to play.

Our first game was against the hosts, Fareham. Fordingbridge ladies struggled to get our heads into the game. It was evident the pressure of proving ourselves and putting all that we had learnt in our high-standard training sessions was having its effect on our performance. By half-time the score was still 0-0. Feeling deflated and frustrated with ourselves, we took to the pitch again for the second half. Thankfully, Georgie Price and Sarah Gorman performed their usual magic and Sarah put the ball over the line to score our first try of the day. The game ended 1-0 to us. It was good to win, but heads were still low, knowing that we had the ability to do better.

Our second game was against US Portsmouth (USP). Sarah Gorman made a fantastic loop round a tackle and sprinted into some space, to receive the ball from Angela Mouland and fly through a gap in the opposition’s defence to cross the line for our first try of the match. In the second half, it was another pass from Angela to Sarah who scored a second try against USP, making the final score 2-0 to us. Two games in and we were starting to warm up.

We faced Farnborough for our third match and Sarah decided to take a rest from her try scoring and allowed our youngest member of the team, Luci Williams, as well as Angela Mouland to score a try a piece, to make our tally three wins on the trot.

Our final match was against Andover; the team we needed to stay ahead of if we are going to win the series overall. By this match we had warmed ourselves up quite nicely and knew we had to pull out all the stops if we were going to beat them today. It was a great game and both sides played hard and defended well. The game ended 0-0 with some rather tired ladies stumbling off the pitch towards the showers.

Today’s results keep Fordingbridge Ladies at the top of the series overall. The ladies are really looking forward to having a fun final event, which will take place on Sunday 17th May. Venue is to be confirmed.