HEATON MOOR LADIES 15 – 15 ORMSKIRK LADIES
Now their League programme has finished it seems likely that the Ladies will finish 2nd in their Division. Surely a creditable performance after winning promotion to North Challenge 1 just last season? Perhaps so, but a better yardstick would be a close examination of their draws. There have been four of them. Two, against lowly placed Northwich and Blaydon, and two against Fleetwood and Heaton Moor, both of whom were buried under mountains of points last season. That looks more like two steps forward, three steps back.
The Ladies have some great players … Lancashire have picked eight of them to play for the County this season … who could easily hold their own two Divisions above North Challenge 1; but most of them are backs. Down in the engine room the Ladies have struggled all season and it was no different when they took on Heaton Moor last Sunday.
Ormskirk tend to prosper when the ball goes out wide and it was kind of Moor, early in the game, to get the ball out there for them. Moor stand off Heidi High went off for one of her trademark gallops, got nailed and spilled the ball to the Ladies’ midget scrummy Anna O’Malley. O’Malley ran the ball in from half way. The howling gale spewing sleet across the Stockport tundra effectively took place kickers out of the game and the Ladies’ try, like all the others, went unconverted.
The 5 – 0 lead lasted until the next scrum. All too often this season scrummaging has just been a complicated way of giving the ball to the other team; and it was no different this time. The big blobby blancmange that is the Ladies scrum coughed up the ball and in the ensuing mayhem Moor won a 5m penalty. After a few brief moments of grunting and shoving they equalised.
Luckily for the Ladies the line out was a relatively fertile source of possession. It is not without its problems, but the throwing of “Mousse” Doyle has improved. Once upon a time Mousse could empty a pub just by picking up a set of darts. On Sunday leggy lock Cath “Satan” Nixon was able get her hands on enough ball to keep the Ladies in the game.
Fly half Jenny Leitch spotted frail, waiflike winger Clare “Shirley” Rylance shivering miserably out on the wing and decided she’d best bring her into the game before hypothermia set in. Her fine, angled kick into the Moor 22 brought a spasm of life from the Ice Queen and Rylance chased the ball down for a try.
Back in the Ormskirk 22, where most of the game was played, Moor were awarded a scrum 10m out. Fly half Heidi High drifted to the blind side. Everbody shouted, “Watch the blind side !”. And, dutifully, everybody watched as Heidi ambled over the line.
Bits of ball were still coming Ormskirk’s way and a commendably good passage of handling, given the slippery conditions, saw Rylance score her second try. The Ladies went for their half time shiver with a 15 – 10 lead with every hope of increasing it. But it was not to be. In the second half Moor took a stranglehold on the game and condemned the Ladies to 40 minutes tackling practise. Eventually Moor equalised but not before the Ladies had found themselves a new heroine – Helen “Bonecrusher” Williams
For the past few games Ormskirk have been without centre Emma “Doombringer” Gander. She is an enormous presence in midfield with a unique tackling style. Known as the Twelve Stone Overcoat it owes nothing to the coaching manual but is simply the brutal application of twelve stone of angry woman to as much of her opponent as possible. It often leads to ball being dislodged and, occasionally, body parts too. Gander’s stand in, elfin speedster and Girl of the Game Williams, foolishly tried to emulate her. When she was scraped off the floor it was with a finer appreciation of the difference between 9 stone and 12 stone than she had had hitherto.
