Barnes Ladies 2nd XV 5 - 34 Pulborough Ladies

On a historic day for Barnes Ladies Rugby club, with our first home double header ever, the twos team were revelling in having a 22-player strong squad to choose from. From the start of the season where we were scrapping together to field a competitive team to have a full bench was a massive achievement even before the game had kicked off. For those of us who have been playing for the twos for last couple of seasons, it was a great opportunity for us to have our friends and family down to watch us play, particularly on a blustery day in January.

We went into the game wanting to replicate the performance we had put in against Pulborough in November’s away fixture, where we had come away with a tight win in what had been an evenly matched game by both sides. With a stirring pre-match chat from Captain Bethan, calling for us to all leave everything on the pitch, we were all in no doubts about the significance of the day.

The beauty of our twos team is that we are a rag tag team of developing players that will come together on a Sunday and often learn each other’s names 5 minutes before kick off. With that though, comes a fair amount of chaos too as the first 10 minutes of the game showed! In windy conditions, we started in a fluster with a fair few knock ons and dropped balls by Barnes, invariably leading to Pulborough’s first try as they managed to find a hole in Barnes defence. However, this came as the wake up call we needed with our fresh faced new coach, Rory, telling us to switch on and rise to the challenge.

With the first scrum after the restart, it quickly became clear that our pack was where we could assert our dominance in the game. With a stacked front row of Ash, Annie and Gin Ellie, we were able to push back Pulborough on every single scrum. If it hadn’t been for the NC3 rules limiting the push back in scrums, there would have been even more turnover balls from the scrums, helped by some excellent hooking from Annie.

As our forwards found their structure, our confidence grew in the game and we had a really fantastic phase of strong forward balls being crashed up by Rachel Henry, Rafi and Bethan. We were also using penalties effectively, with Wellie puting in helping us catch Pulborough unaware and run the ball up. Although Pulborough scored another try (despite some excellent defending on both wings by Meli and Angie), the team were fired up and we retaliated almost instantaneously.

With a couple more dominant forward phases, we had made it within 10 metres of the try line. Lily popped the ball to one of our newest players, Gin Ellie at prop, and she was able to make a break with the ball in hand, single handily crashing through five of Pulborough’s players to score her first try for Barnes, right under the sticks. The side line went crazy, with coach Andy proclaiming she had that natural rugby skill at being able to bulldoze through players to get the ball over the line.

We went into half time 10-5 down, but fuelled with Lucozade and some sage advice from coaches Andy and Rory, we went into the second half knowing that we were still very much in the game. We made one change, with Melissa coming off for Emelia on the wing and went back on ready to give it our all for the next 35 minutes.

The first 10 minutes of the second half were our most dominant of the game, with us having phase after phase in Pulborough’s twenty two. Angie and Sab both made good breaks on the wing, but on a narrow pitch there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre and we kept being pushed into touch. Unfortunately, we couldn’t capitalise on our chances and Pulborough held us up well, going on to score another couple of tries in quick succession.

In the spirit of the twos game, we subbed on our whole bench with fresh legs being added to the wing in our newest recruits in Anna and Tina and Sarah making a cameo appearance at 10. Emilia came in to 9 and helped bring a sense of calm to the backline and helping us to strengthen our rucks and slow down the game. Keen to hold out until the end, there was some good ditch defending on the line by Barnes, with Sab stepping up to take a good high pressure exit kick out the back of the scrum to give us some much needed breathing space.

With 5 minutes left of the game after Pulborough had made the score 34-5, we weren’t deflated and chanted behind the posts to ‘be aggressive’ and give it one last push to show the crowd what we were made of. From the kick off we looked after the ball and nursed it up close to the line, showing off our structure as we swung the pods from side to side across the pitch. Although we got within metres of the Pulborough try line, we couldn’t quite get the ball over the line, with Gin Ellie no longer being quite such a secret weapon Pulborough piled the defence on her. With the final whistle, it was clear that the team had followed Bethan’s instructions and left everything on the pitch and that we would all be limping in to work on Monday. Whilst it might not have been the result we wanted, it was a gutsy performance with our newest players showing huge potential for the future.

A shout out to our 4 Imperial University players who played for twos, Lucy, Zoe, Graham and Maeve. We have relied on this link over the past two seasons to have you girls come down and play for the twos and always love to have your youthful enthusiasm on the pitch and love for the game.

In unconventional style, we had our match pints on the side of the pitch with Pulborough after we had spectated the second half of the 1s game, thanks to Pulborough for being so accommodating with the early kick off and waiting in the cold with us at the end of the game.

Our forward of the match went to Gin Ellie, for making some fantastic breaks with the ball and scoring a great first individual try. Our back of the match went to Wellie, who’s tenacious lines at 10 brought structure to the chaos in the back line Our players player went to Annie, returning from two months out from injury, she had a great first game playing at hooker and really helped us to dominate in the scrums throughout the game.