Ee, that were a reet proper game of rugby, played between two teams in brown.
Let’s be honest, we weren’t going to beat Gloucester-Hartpury (eight games, eight wins, eight try bonus points), but we could at least let them know they’d been in a game.
Mission accomplished.
It’s been fun watching the women this season (they’ve almost always been enjoyable games, but last season was particularly hard to watch). There’s still some way to go, but you can see the makings of a reasonably competitive team there. At the moment, I think they lack a bit of the coherence that comes with having played together for a long time. This is very noticeable in the defence, which often seems to be scrambling, rather than making an impenetrable wall. This is not a criticism, by the way, just an observation on what is quite obviously a work in progress.
They still shouldn’t have lost to Bristol last week, though…
Gloucester-Hartpury got off to a decent start with a couple of quick tries, but then the Sale women started to come back into it, and made them work hard for their rewards. The Sale scrum was getting bullied at first, but a good maul leading to Hyndman’s try seemed to give them a bit of a confidence boost and they looked a lot firmer from then on.
I thought they deserved more out of the second half, although restricting G-H to a single try was a pretty good effort.
I’m sticking with my earlier claim that the signing of the season is Sharifa Kasolo. She’s brought some much-needed dynamism to the number eight shirt and seems to be involved in just about everything.
Katana Howard is just immense. ‘Nuff said…
Asia Hogan-Rochester got a proper run out this time, but the conditions were, shall we say, less than ideal for her style of play, so we need to wait a while to see the best of her.
I couldn’t end this summary without an appreciation of Georgie Perris-Redding, though. Like Kasolo, she seems to be involved in everything. If someone’s bending the ref’s ear, it’s Georgie. And no one was surprised at who was right at the centre of the… “heated discussion”… between the packs in the middle of the second half.
For those who still haven’t watched the women, try it. You never know, you might actually enjoy it…
an old grey dog 