Formed 2004 ... Herts 7s U14 Runners-up 2005 ... North Herts U14 team, Herts Youth Games 2005 runners-up (coached by Letchworth)... Herts Superteams U14 Runners-up 2005 ... Herts SuperTeams "Fairplay" winners 2006 ... Rochford 10s U17 Champions 2006 ... East Midlands 10s U17 Runners-up 2007 ... East Midlands 10s U17 "Fairplay" winners 2007 ... National 10s U17 5th place and "Fairplay" winners 2007 ... Herts 7s U17 Plate runners-up 2007 ... National 7s U17 Plate winners 2007 ... RFU "President's XV" Award winners 2007 ... Herts Superteams winners 2007 ... Midlands 10s U18 Runners-up 2008 ... National 10s U18 4th place 2008 ... North Herts U11 team, Herts Youth Games 2008 runners-up (coached by Letchworth girls) ... London and SE 7s U18 Plate runners-up 2008 ... Herts 7s U18s runners-up 2008 ... National 7s U18s quarter-finalists 2008 ... Gloucester City 10s U18 Bowl runner-up (6th) 2009 ... Worthing 10s U18 Plate runner-up 2009 ... National 7s U18 Plate winners 2009... Worthing 10s U15 Plate winners 2010... Worthing 10s U18 Shield winners 2010... Herts 7s U15 and U18 Bowl runners-up 2010... National 7s U18 Plate runners-up 2010...

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

No mercy - a tale of girls school rugby, kiwi-style


A remarkable little story from Land of the Long White Cloud - and maybe a small clue as to why the New Zealanders are so good at the game.

Southland Girls High School, from Invercargill recently took on local rivals James Hargest/Menzies College, and ran out winners by 144 points to 0! Obviously there are one sided games like this all the time, but this story stands out for a number of reasons...

1. This was Southlands Girls 1st XV, which kind of implies that they have a 2nd, and maybe even 3rd XV, as well. This is pretty impressive for a school roughly the same size as Hitchin Girls'!

2. They clearly have no concept of mercy in Kiwi rugby - no truck with concepts such as calling a game off when one team is 50 points ahead. On the contrary, in New Zealand it would seem that, once an opponent is on the floor, the main consideration is to go for the jugular and keep them there.

3. Southlands scored 22 tries - 17 of which were converted by full-back Nina Shields (left) - in a game that lasted only 45 minutes. Taking into account the time to take the kicks, for Nina to get back into position for the next restart and so on, this would seem to mean that they scored a try every minute or so that the ball was in play! Its not that far short of the world record in a properly contested match over 80 minutes (which is somewhere around 229-0) - indeed in terms of points scored per minute it would seem to exceed it!

4. And finally the newspaper report is a straight report on the game with none of the man-bites-dog journalism that most mentions of the game in this country tend to get.

In short, its difficult to imagine that anything like this would ever happen here!

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