A total of 7 teams from around the region took to the field at the Abellana Sports Complex in Cebu, Philippines on July 11th to compete in the 2015 Ladies Cebu 10s Rugby Festival. Now in its second year, the tournament is one of the only women’s competitions in Asia, and the rugby was hard and closely contested.

The Teams

A strong contingent of Hong Kong teams led the international challenge, including HKRFU Premiership League powerhouses Valley and Gai Wu RFC. The always competitive HKS Kukris, and a serious outfit from Chinese Universities of Hong Kong meant that the other teams would have their work cut out for them if they wanted to make sure that the silverware would not be heading to the ex-British colony this year.

The inaugural champions, the Bangkok Belles, were not on hand to defend their title, but some of the squad had returned as part of the NTU Women’s Rugby team, a University team from Singapore, which featured a handful of international players, and a lot of determination.

It was the Cebu Lady Dragons and the Mayhem Durians (combined team of players from Manila and Davao) that flew the flag for the home crowd, and were tasked with the daunting prospect of fighting of this slew of invaders.

Matches

The rugby was hard, the weather was hot, and the games were many with little time for rest in between. With almost every match being decided by two tries or less, and many being settled in the dying seconds of the game, the standard of play and overall competitiveness made for some great rugby, and the crowd were treated to a great spectacle of the game they play in heaven.

Lady Dragons

It was a mixed bag of results for the hometown heroines, the Lady Dragons struggled in the morning, and were winless after three matches going into the lunch break. The team that took the field for the first afternoon fixture against the undefeated Hong Kong Scottish Kukris looked much more like the squad that won Gold the week before at the Philippine National Games, and they finally chalked up a “W”, handing HKS their first loss of the day.

The Cebu ladies carried their good form through their remaining matches, and the Kukris seemed to have been infected with the ‘losing bug’ that had previously plagued the Dragons. Both teams ended the pool games with a record of 3 wins and 3 losses (Cebu held the tie-breaker and were seeded 3rd due to points differential), which meant they would face-off again in the Final of the Claw division.

From the opening whistle, both teams were fired up, and the local girls had a, by now, pretty raucous crowd behind them. But their delightful afternoon romp had run its course, and they had no answer to the Kukris onslaught, who ran in three unanswered tries to take a commanding lead. The Cebu women kept their heads up and were rewarded with a late consolation try, but it was too little, too late, and it was the Scottish who lifted the trophy when the full-time whistle blew.

The Cup Final

At the conclusion of the round robin pool games, it was the Valley Meerkats who, with only 8 players in their touring squad, qualified in the top spot, led by some exemplary play from their captain Bella. The team from Gai Wu had been edged by the Valley girls earlier in the day by a score of 7-12, their only blemish in an otherwise impressive outing, and enough to get them another shot at their cross-town rivals in the Cup Final.

And it would be Gai Wu who would get revenge over the Meerkats, scoring a try in the last play of the tournament to even the scores, and then keeping their composure to kick the winning conversion after the final hooter had sounded to claim the Lady Dragons Cup trophy for 2015.

Team Standings

In the bottom half of the draw, the Mayhem Durians missed the cut, finishing at the bottom of the table with 1 win from 6 matches. This left the two academic teams, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore and the Chinese Universities of Hong Kong, to fight it out for the Dragons Tail… and boy did they fight. Honour and pride were on the line, and both teams played with everything they had left. Though the rugby was not the prettiest, the heart and determination in the way the game was played was a beautiful thing to behold.

Both teams played hard, tough rugby, which is not easy to do after a long bruising day of hard, tough rugby. As with so many other games, this one went down to the wire, a try to NTU in the last play of the game tied things up, and an unsuccessful conversion attempt meant 5 more minutes of ‘golden-point’ extra time. With no change in the score after 5 minutes, each team was then required to drop a player each every minute until the elusive golden point was scored. It was only when each side was down to 7 players that NTU were able to crack the CHUK defence and score the winning try… then collapse as one. Ripper of a final, with Singapore preventing a clean sweep of the trophies by the HK clubs.

See You Next Year

All in all, it was a great day for rugby. All the teams played to a very high standard and were very evenly matched, making the matches very competitive. This can only bode well for the future of the women’s game in Asia, and particularly in Cebu.

Thanks

Thank you to everyone who participated, organised, or simply watched and enjoyed the tournament. Next year we hope to see you back in Cebu on the 9th of July for the 3rd Annual Ladies Cebu 10s Rugby Festival, which we hope will just continue to get bigger and better with every tournament.