News from the regions

News from Sleaford, where Jess and Sasha were playing for East U18s against Yorkshire. Convincing win for East. Sasha was prop this time, and Jess, who again played the full game - was at flanker. She says "We won 59-12 against Yorkshire, definitely not as strong as last year. The backs must take the credit for the points with a score just about every time the ball was shipped out, after some hard graft from the forwards. conceded a few penalties in the first half, got a "team warning" first phase of second half, Frankie came in, was penalised for not rolling away and despite the fact she'd been on the field 30 seconds!  All round good performance, one more training now until the festival squad is announced!" (More pictures here).

Nearer to home Hayley turned out for the East Seniors against Thames Valley. There seems to be no correlation between the strength of junior and senior teams and Thames Valley, one of the weaker junior regions, turned out to be a strong and well drilled adult team. Hayley was on the bench for the first half, which began promisingly for East but finished with them trailing 15-10, thanks to a string of penalties awarded against them.

Hayley joined the fray for the second half, which also began well, Hayley in close support as East pulled the game back to 15-15 in the first five minutes. However, that was more or less that and the rest of the game was played almost entirely in the East half with Hayley touching the ball once (I think), but getting lots of tackling practice. 

With a penalty count that reached almost absurd levels, East could not hold Thames Valley back. Fortunately Hayley had obviously learnt from her last visit to Tabard RFC and refrained from seeking clarification from the referee, confining herself to occasional waved arm as Thames Valley went on to win 28-15.

Despite that Hayley reported that the captain was still quite pleased with this result as last season East failed to score any tries at all!