Aston O E Ladies 72 - Sileby Town Ladies 5

Early exchanges indicated that this would be a hard fought battle, with strong running and strong tackling, and indeed that was the pattern for the first 10 minutes, but Aston were first to make inroads into the opposition 22. However, a combination of strong Sileby goal line defence and some Aston handling errors foiled the home side’s scoring opportunities until Jennie managed to sidestep and dummy her way over the line to break the deadlock, with Rachel adding the extra points.

From the kick-off Aston’s quick passing fed the ball to Caiomhe, who, with an inside break opened up the opposition defence to score under the posts, and Rachel again added the extra points.

Undeterred, Sileby launched their own offensive, and under this pressure Aston conceded three quick penalties the last of which led to a Sileby try which they failed to convert. This gave Sileby some confidence, and they exerted a period of pressure, putting Aston on the back foot, but they could not convert this into points

Aston slowly regained control and following some strong scrummaging in midfield, the Ball was moved to Caiomhe who, with a smart dummy, beat the Sileby defence to cross for another unconverted try. A huge tackle by Cat Salmon on the left wing regained possession and led to an excellent passing movement across the field to the right wing, where Rachel gratefully accepted the chance to run in a try from halfway and added the conversion.

From the kick-off, uncertainty in the Sileby ranks handed Aston the opportunity to embark on another fine handling movement, which Caoimhe finished off with a try which Rachel again converted, and this was quickly followed by a fine run by Athena to add another try.

A scrum on the opposition 22 resulted in Sileby being pushed back 15 metres, following which Bex reversed the line of attack from open to blind as a result of which she had a clear run for a further try. From the resulting Sileby kick off Jess received the ball to start a 60 metre charge to the line which was cut short 10 metres from the line, only for her to get up and regain the ball to score an excellent individual try.

Confidence was oozing, and after some accurate passing Athena scored with one of her typical 50 meter runs, to which Rachel added the conversion. From the resulting kick-off more fine handling moved the ball out to the left wing for Jennie to score in the corner (what she was doing out there is anyone’s guess!).

Another fine handling movement saw Bex stopped short of the line, and from the resulting scrum another handling move resulted in a try for Lauren which Rachel converted.

This was an all round team victory built on solid defence, hard running and support work, and was possibly the team’s best performance to date against a team who never gave up and were much better than the final score would suggest.