NORTHWICH LADIES 5 – 5 ORMSKIRK LADIES
With bats flitting between the three-quarters and badgers rooting around in the scrums the referee finally blew the whistle and allowed the teams to grope their way back through the gloom to the changing rooms. So a match scheduled to start at 2pm on a crisp autumnal afternoon finally finished under a dark and moonless sky at 5.15pm on a pitch 200m away from where it started. Just don’t ask …
In a scrappy first half there wasn’t much to set the pulse racing unless you happened to be in the car driven to Northwich by scrum half Anna O’Malley. While coach Sean “Bean” Fogarty was trying to raise the heart rates of the rest of the team, O’Malley’s passengers were trying to get their’s down from 250bpm. Unfortunately for the Ladies O’Malley transferred her ‘look ! no hands !’ driving technique into her scrum half play. Hence Northwich’s equalising score late in the first half.
Lock Catherine ‘Satan’ Nixon’s pact with Beelzebub seemed to be holding as the forwards secured lineout ball in their own 22. But sadly the ball fell to O’Malley, a committed Methodist and therefore not a signatory to the deal. Her pass to fly half Jenny Leitch, deep in her own in goal area, could charitably be described as rank. Leitch opted to volley the ball upfield ( good decision ) but not up high ( bad
decision ). With unerring accuracy she picked out the biggest, meanest mother on the Northwich team who gratefully ran it back 15m for a try.
The Ladies had started the game with a period of unearned dominance while the Northwich half backs sorted out which one was Laurel and which one was Hardy. A series of scuffed kicks and dropped passes … surely these girls should move to Ormskirk? … kept the Ladies on the front foot. Leitch ( twice ) and wingist Claire Rylance came close before skipper Emma “Doombringer” Gander banged one in from outside the 22.
The ball retention of both teams improved greatly in the second period ; probably because the referee despaired of trying to police the ruck. With more hands in the ruck than in Catherine the Great’s knickers he had obviously decided that the Experimental Law Variations, due to be introduced in 2009, might just as well be applied there and then. At one point he turned to an exasperated spectator who was baying for a penalty and said, “How many do you want me to give ?”
But for all their technical inadequacies, both teams gave everything in muscle, gristle and heart. The tackling was superb from both sides. For the Ladies lock Carmel Dunkley dunkled to bruising effect, Gander brought doom as advertised and full back Rachael Birrell, three times, cut down North Witches one on one with the try line beckoning. The greatest injustice of the game came when cutesy blonde, blue eyed, Shirley Temple look alike Rylance nearly took the head off of a Northwich centre. Gander, blamelessly involved in the tackle, took the punch from the aggrieved centre and then the referee’s warning as Rylance, all melting innocence, sidled slyly into the background. It was reminiscent of Cassie Williams at her finest. Cassie, whose apparently guileless charm was matched only by her viciousness, became a Ladies’ Legend. As, no doubt, will Rylance.
Twice more the Ladies should have scored. Rylance’s superb break should have led to a try for Nixon, but Shirley Temple failed to hear Satan whispering in her ear and instead looked inside for non existent support. And then Gander and inside centre Louise “Mrs Robinson” Robinson failed to spot an overlap and elected to run painfully into one another rather than score a try. It was left to blind side flanker Suzanne “Tooks” Gibson to provide the highlight of the game. Famed for her touch rugby dummies, she successfully threw her first dummy in contact rugby and made an extra metre. A bit more sprint training, eh, Tooks ?
