Nikki escapes the clutches of Sasha - 
I'm not entirely sure what the above headline means, but I am guessing that it is not a million miles from "certifiable lunatics play rugby on frozen Finnish lake...".
The RFUW will be holding four "Divisional Club Conferences" to provide a training and development opportunity for club volunteers in June. These excellent conferences include a variety of sessions for everyone, from players to officials to helpers and administrators - and this year one of them is right on our doorstep, as the South East and London will be at at Herts Sports Village in Hatfield on 28th June
Further details will be sent out during April, but the costs are low - and anyway chances are we'll happily pay for any parents or players interested in attending. So if you are interested in going please let me or Mike know asap, or for more info about the day contact Gemma Ryan at the RFUW on 020 8831 6788 or at gemmaryan@rfu.com.
The RFUW has announced the creation of a £7,500 of "Club Development Toolkit Fund" for clubs begining of developing girls or women's sections. Clubs are asked to apply directly through a bidding process to receive funding. It is a one-off opportunity, so the messahe is to grab it while you can!
Two funding pots are available:
Each club applying for the Club Development Toolkit Funding must meet the following criteria:
Applications should comprise of a project, event or resources which aims to recruit and/or retain players and/or volunteers and therefore improve the sustainability of the club. Examples may include:
Letchworth Garden City Hertitage Foundation's latest report (issued to all homes in the Garden City this weekend) includes mention of new grants from the Foundation to support "sporting excellence".
Take a look at this.
... meanwhile Randy demonstrated her darts technique?! Anyway, they started off with some tackle bag work ...
... which Wonky explained and then demonstrated ...
After the tackle bags, the girls were doing a complex passing drill which apparently goes by several different names depending on which part of the planet you originate from. (Anyway, it didn't matter to me because I didn't know any of them). The whole thing was very intricate - almost like a dance - and here we see Jess apparently preparing to go dos-a-dos with the coach ...
... but it did seem to keep the girls on their toes ...
Thanks, Wonky!
With snow now forecast for Sunday it couldn't be a better time to have weekend off. And it may even soften the ground up a bit for the usual hectic final few weeks so that the sevens don't take place on concrete this year!
About half of the girls came from Hitchin RFC - and they promptly disappeared to who knows where after returning to Hitchin (a great pity as there were two or three VERY good players amongst them).
EDF Energy - who sponsor the Anglo-Welsh Cup - are running this "Spot the Ball" competition to win tickets for the final. Its a nice idea, shame that it could not be made even mildly more challenging (a clue, should you need it,is to look at the shadows...)
[Looking through the archives is cheating!]
and when things got started Sasha was soon in the thick of the action -
When Nikki charged down a Kettering clearing kick the ball rebounded just over the dead-ball line -
Sasha continued to carve her way through the midfield -
and Nikki was denied a try by a matter of inches when this attack was stopped by a last ditch tackle -
Jess was also making breaks in midfield -
and was prevented from scoring by a fine tackle some 10 metres short of the line -
Meanwhile, in the forwards, Enily was capturing lineout ball - 
Charlie was getting used to a different position - 
and all of them were supporting each other -
Hayley's second try caused some consternation to her team-mates when, having crossed the try line in the corner, she proceeded to run through the Kettering defence a second time in order to ground the ball under the posts!
As noted by Vincent on the Eastern Counties blog, Carol Isherwood has announced that she is standing down as the RFUW's director of rugby. Carol has been involved in women's rugby, as player or administrator, since the very beginning.To be pedantic and correct Vincent ever so slightly she was a founder member - the first Secretary no less - of the WRFU (not RFUW) from its formation in 1983. This was a unique UK-wide rugby union, but eventually broke up as first Ireland, then Scotland, and finally Wales left to form their own unions leaving England to establish its own union - the RFUW - in 1994. A minor quibble, but one which goes some way to explain the current union's slightly odd name.
As a player she was the first captain of the short-lived Great Britain international team (playing in all seven of their games between 1986 and 1989), and was also the first captain of England in 1987, gaining eight international caps with the red rose. She also gained an OBE for services to women's rugby in 2003.
So, how does this affect us, I hear you cry (even assuming you have read this far)? Well, in the short term not much - certainly not until Carol's post is filled. But in a small, tightly run game where the activities of the central governing body can have a significant effect on the grass roots any change will filter down pretty quickly. The RFUW is a still a very young organisation, and up until now has been inevitably run by the same people since its formation. Now the ball could be being passed to the next generation. New faces invariably bring in new viewpoints, and new ideas (it is rare that someone joins an organisation with the aim of keeping things as they are!). These ideas will affect the game, and the competitions, that you play. How? Who knows - but watch this space (or maybe this one!).
And later Randy was to do it again at the other end with one of the best last ditch tackles at the end of a scoreless second half against Westcliff.
Admittedly there had been the odd other score by both Worcester and Westcliff/Sudbury in the interim. Well, half a dozen odd scores or more in fact. And half the team turning their backs and strolling into line after giving away a penalty to Worcester only about 7m out (and then seeming mildly surprised to see a flash of blue and gold shoot by) was perhaps not the best example of what we are capable of. And we could maybe look to move the ball wider and more quickly (there is still a tendency for centres to take the ball into contact too early too often) - but on the plus side it was good to see our forwards more than match their prestigious West Midlands opponents in the set pieces.
Other things to look at? A few that no doubt Simon will be working on. Perhaps one question might be why we are still giving away so many points in the first few minutes of our games (if memory serves 17-0 down to Worcester and 10-0 down to Westcliff in the first five minutes or less of each game).
And we really do need to find someone who can hold up the club's honour at post-match eating and drinking games. Hayley spectacularly failing last year, Jess this, not to mention the entire team being whitewashed by the Canadians last Easter... its not good. Definately an area of the game that we need to work on!
Eleanor driving into the Saracens defence :
Randy scoring a try :
Georgie feeding the ball out to Hayley :
who bursts through to score the only try of the second half :
A combination of Christmas holidays, club notices which allowed for different interpretations, attempts to change things by letter half-way through a season, and different people reading different things (or not) meant that while most of you turned up at 10.00 this morning (including Simon) some came at 11.30. My profuse apologies for those who came at the later time and therefore had wasted journeys.The Welsh RFU have been doing wonders since the men's and women's unions merged last year. One major project has been tracing their national women's team's history - a project that probably puts them ahead of pretty much any other union anywhere.
Their latest is a real gem. Video of the first ever England v Wales women's rugby international - a game which was also the first international for both nations.
The game took place at Pontypool Park on 5th April 1987 - and England and Wales have played at least once a season ever since - 23 times in all - making it comfortably the the longest-running series in women's rugby... and England have won every game.
A "Great Britain" team had played the season before - losing 14-8 to France at Richmond - so for many of the the players this was not quite their first international, but this is still a very early event in the history of the game. The first inter-club tournaments in the UK had only started the season before, most players would have been playing for a handful of years, and it would be another seven years before the RFUW would be formed - the quality of play (and come to that the size of the crowd) is therefore all the more impressive.
Final score: Wales 4, England 22
(before anyone says anything, a try did not become worth five points until 1992/3...)
Our U18 county girls will see at least one familiar face when they play against Canada's U19s next Saturday.
As some of you may know, I've been doing some research into the history of women's international rugby for the past eight months or so. I'm not actually sure quite I can remember why any more, but its been an interesting project.In practice this makes little difference to us, other than the slightly later time for training if we ever train on a Sunday. Home matches will, however, be confined to the top pitch for U18s and "fourth team pitch" for U15s (if played at the same time - there are plans to re-erect posts on the fourth pitch, apparently) until things improve, ie. the spring presumably.
Further to Sunday's game, Phil has provided a short video illustrating Natalie's hunting technique.
Or, to put it another way...
