Game Report: June 12, 2010

Senior Women's First Team
Aurora Barbarians RFC (ABRFC) 25 - London 10

Inspired by the previous performanceof the 2nd XV, and with an axe to grind from an ugly loss in London the year before, a focussed and determined group took the field. Kicking off, Aurora quickly regained possession and applied a lot of early pressure and it was only some handling errors and turnovers that prevented them from taking an early lead. It was 10 minutes before London got the ball out of their half and quickly lost it again. But once more, the precision was not there and they failed to turn pressure to points. Aurora were being outhustled at the breakdown and thus were unable to put together the phases required to breakdown the London defence. Eventually after 25 minutes of almost non-stop play in the London half, their defence was breached on the outside as Jillisa ran around the outside to open the scoring with an unconverted try. A second try followed quickly four minutes later around the opposite wing as Courtney looped and supported her own pass before scoring under the posts, though again unconverted. We lost Meg Sheahan to a calf strain and her scrummaging was missed despite a very solid substitution by Amber. The Barbarians once more allowed mental lapses to slip into their game, allowing too many turnovers at the breakdown and too many handling errors for any continuity to develop in their game. London took advantage and scored their only try of the half. Aurora only had a 10-5 lead at the half despite being in London's half fo over 30 minutes. Turnvers and errors had proved costly.

Some stern words at half time and some water helped Aurora find the continuity that was lacking, and that had been very present in the previous two matches of the season. Some nice passages of play were strung together and five minutes into the second half Nicole crashed though a couple of tackles and was in for our third try of the match. Alas, we could not build on this momentum. Although there were several moments where things came together, there were too many turnovers, too many handling errors and too many bad choices. London scored again before we replied with our fourth (bonus) try,a second from Nicole. Aurora closed out the match with a series of poor decisions, poor execution and were lucky not to concede any further points before the final whistle. One conversion and one penalty added to our four tries for a 25-10 final.

The Aurora I Women have played three, won three and taken all their bonus points. This has been a very good start to the season and we look to continue this trend. We look forward to seeing greater numbers this week.