On Sunday 18th January, London Scottish Girls squad took part in the second round of the RFU U15 Girls Cup competition South region.
For these games we are partnered with Hackney Belles and Southwark Tigers and the combined team travelled to Gosford All Backs in Oxfordshire where we were scheduled to be playing in a round robin format against Gosford, Welwyn and Ellingham & Ringwood.
With our squad still developing this season, there is a variation in the match experience amongst the girls and with only one full training session with our partner clubs Hackney and Southwark behind us, we knew we would be challenged by other teams with greater familiarity and continuity.
Our girls demonstrated great positivity and spirit in their first game against Welwyn, but were undone by an opposition with several very strong players and greater collective assertiveness.
Despite some good defensive work and determination, our inability to either get or keep the ball for any length on time took it's toll and we ended up conceding five tries to lose 0-33.
Despite being a “Barbarian” team brought together a week in advance, the girls showed great maturity as a group to identify their own shortcomings when preparing for game two.
This was against Ellingham & Ringwood, and we started brightly with the girls turning their words into actions in attempting to address some of their first game issues.
This led to a more balanced match to begin with but, against the run of play, the Ellingham winger proved uncatchable and scored under the posts.
Despite great persistence we were unable to break down the Ellingham defence whereas our own failure to make a few first time tackles led to us conceding a further two tries to lose 0-21.
So on to our final game against hosts Gosford All Blacks and the girls would have been forgiven for being tired from the two previous games on a very boggy pitch.
However, they showed their ability to learn and grow as a team to put together by far their best all round game of the day.
Our forwards had been dominating scrums all day but really started hitting the breakdowns much more as a unit in this game and the backs too found some fluidity as well as the space out wide.
Having conceded a soft early try, the team really took it back to Gosford scoring two excellent team tries run in by Immy and Claudia and coming very close with a disallowed try at the final whistle.
A 10-5 win to round off the day and a happy bunch of girls proud of their efforts.
The squad players were.
1 Gabby Spencer (L Scottish)
2 Molly Jones (Hackney)
3 Lola Martinez (Hackney)
4 Ceri Beynon (L Scottish)
5 Amy Hopkins (L Scottish)
8 Becca Lawn (L Scottish)
9 Fiona Kennedy (L Scottish)
10 Morven Calway (L Scottish)
11 Anna Uren (L Scottish)
12 Immy Beagley (L Scottish)
13 Danielle Watkins (Southwark)
14 Rihanna Campbell (Southwark)
15 Freya Aucken (L Scottish)
16 Inken Oades (Hackney)
17 Claudia Lee (L Scottish)
18 Jaya Rathbone (Hackney)
