200 match milestone ahead

Sometime on Sunday afternoon the U18s will walk onto the field at Worthing for what will be a notable game. First, if all goes well, their fourth game of the day could be a semi-final,  or it may be the final group game to reach the semi-finals. However whatever the game is it will also be a bit of a landmark for the team, the girls' section - and maybe the whole club.

This is because it will be the girls' section's 200th game!

That is quite a lot of rugby, and hopefully there will be at least three girls on the field who were there for match number one - Carla (then hooker and goal kicker), Nikki (then a centre, if I remember right), and Mel (who played on the wing(?) - and whose idea and enthusiasm got the whole section going in the first place!).

During this time we have played games from west Cornwall to north Nottinghamshire against about 80 different teams (you can see them all here), including three from Canada, with something like 100 girls (maybe more!) pulling on a Letchworth shirt - some for one game, most for many more than that. Nikki for one played her 50th game in only our second season, so heaven knows how many times she has played now! 

We've have also won just under half of our games, which isn't bad. Remember that one unique feature about Letchworth is that most of our players do not come from mini sections or families who play rugby. We've all had to learn, most from scratch and (as our new U15s are finding) that means that you may lose a few before you learn to be a winning team. However (again as the U15s are showing), the most important thing - much more important than any result - is that everyone enjoys playing the game and in that we we must be getting something right at Letchworth!

This is a significant milestone. Unfortunately many (possibly most) girls teams do not get this far - the game loses about a third of its girls clubs every two years, and even those that continue rarely play an average of over 40 games per year.

So congratulations to everyone. By the season's end we should be well on our way to 250 games - and our growing number of players should see us through that milestone and beyond!