The Girls travelled to Peterborough to play the hosts and Hitchin, two well-known hotbeds of girls’ rugby. Due to half-term we travelled with a reduced squad, missing some of our standout players of the season. One of the challenges of girls’ rugby is that teams either have too few players, or loads of experienced ones. As we had only 7 of our normal 11 the opposition were kind enough to lend us 3 players for each game.

So, we arrived with the focus upon learning more about the game. In the event, the team put up excellent battling performances in both games, running out of steam in the second half. Player of the day was Amma, who after almost cutting her opposite number in half in the tackle then scored two excellent tries, including a kick-off return and an astonishing 50 metre dash from a standing start, beating four opponents on the way. This from a girl who hadn’t played a month ago.

Bethany took on the captaincy for the day and led with her usual quiet determination, making some top quality cover tackles on the wing. Molly made good progress again, scoring her first try for the club. Mimi once more proved her worth at fullback, snuffing out attacks and making line breaks to get on the score sheet. The engine room of Ella, Lottie and Charlie improved their collective rucking and ball carrying, making and preventing some hard yards.

The highlight of the day was going into half time 4-3 up against Peterborough, a position well beyond expectations. We fell away in the first few minutes of the second half and despite a late surge couldn’t come back into it.

The team has made huge progress on rucking and attacking in recent weeks, having the ability to make yards and breaks.Tackling remains a point to work on despite some good individual efforts. Overall, the team goes from strength to strength and the performance today demonstrated that we now have excellent depth in the squad.