219 points.Part 2. Women's game.

Sunday comes around to soon when you are hanging from too much beer and not enough sleep. With no car anymore I leave my house at about 10am and wander the streets looking for coffee and food carrying everything I believe I may need to get me through the day. On this occasion I left with just a coat, even forgot my whistle as I prepared to wander to the club to see the women play. I actually really enjoy being involved in the small way I am with the women’s set up. -- I am a rugby anorak, I read stats, I look at coaching patterns, when people are watching the dancing girls in the pre-match build up to a premiership game, I am looking at the cone arrangement the coach is setting out or how they use the pads. Some people use the internet for porn, me I am obsessed with finding a warm up drill via YouTube. The other day I even watched a football team warm up and thought “how could you use that in a rugby sense.” For the record I still haven’t worked it out yet. I have never had an eye for detail in anything other than rugby. When it comes to rugby I am obsessed with the minutiae of every single aspect of the game. – The women kindly offer me an outlet for this and the chance to get over excited about defensive patterns, slices, body positions at the scrums and where to opposition look weak without looking to bored.


The team this weekend face Kilburn and Kilburn a team with their own issues were unable to raise a side so we found ourselves in the unique position of having more players than them. To ensure the game went ahead we loaned them a couple of players who kindly volunteered and played in a 10’s format. As soon as this decision was made, I was pretty confident it was a win. Our team possess the best and quickest set of backs of any team I have ever been involved with. When the ball moves wide they are devastating and that is not to belittle the forwards, they too have produced the ball that gets the backs going and have done it very well. With the exception of the 2 teams we have not faced yet this season and even including the only one we lost to. The Chesham ladies team are formidable and their pace is terrifying from 9-15 they are like a team of roadrunners and I will be honest 1-8 are no slouches. This season they have had a tough start but with every game they get better and better and better. Every player in the team has improved from the oldest and most experienced to the newest and the youngest and some have exceeded that. We have a quiete young centre who started the season barely able to talk and each game she has improved so much so that on Sunday she was in total charge of the defence pointing out the weakness making tackles and getting straight back up into the back line. It was a vital performance with a few key players missing. Also the team were able to field 2 players totally new to rugby who took to the field and did their stuff for the final few minutes and looked like they enjoyed themselves.

As for Kilburn, well I can’t help but to feel huge sympathy for them, as a player and coach in the past I have been in their shoes. It is heartbreaking and hard work, and you feel like the world is against you but they did their club proud, and as a result of their trip 23 people got to play rugby. They scored a try which we all felt they deserved; and personally, I got to spout my rugby nonsense for a couple of hours.