| Owls Ladies v Viqueens Match Report 26.06.10 |
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Owls 25 def Viqueens 3 After some soul searching over the past few weeks and finding answers to questions we’ve been asked, the message to come out of this game is .........we’re back! Having got a win over us in Round 1, Viqueens came into this match as unbeaten competition leaders looking to confirm their favouritism for the premiership. We came into the match to show that we still want it. Viqueens were without 4 key players, but we were without Teges who was in camp with the Wallaroos and Rachael who is out injured. Viqueens opened the scoring with a penalty the first time they got into range in our half to go up 3 – 0. Matches between us are usually close, so the decision to go for goal when they were in an attacking position near our quarter was a sign of this. It was the only scoring Viqueens would do. There were many good performances, but what came through above any particular individual effort was the way we combined as a team. We gelled as a unit. We played with the mentality of securing the ball, moving forward and smashing any Viqueen b*#%h that got in the way of us doing that! Dee, Cassie and Lil scored tries from backline movements that involved, quick link passes, straight running and pace to finish off. All through the game Lil didn’t hesitate to come in off her wing to get to the breakdown when she needed to, Cassie made her tackles and Dee found holes in the defence to run in. Melly was Player of the Match. She got to the breakdown and wrestled to get the ball at every opportunity. Mel repeatedly punched the ball up into the hard to get through areas in the middle of rucks, gave off loads and was always trying to get us moving forward. Mel was everywhere and did so much work. Laura also had a quality game and stepped up into her own with some strong cleanouts and clean lineout work. She was a valuable contributor and on another day could have easily been player of the match. Skeda was outstanding. She ran hard, threw long left to right passes and hit the lineouts with accurate throws. Shar had what was probably her best ever game of rugby and really stamped her presence on the match, and literally on a couple of Viqueens, with some power cleanouts and rough hits. The half closed out with Skeda and Shar nailing a set play with a zero ball down a lineout blind to take us out to 20 – 3. We were dominant. In the second half we picked up where we left off, but the difference was the Viqueens began to read what we were doing and adjust. Although we continued to get good field positions we were kept to scoring only 1 more try. Taking advantage of some Viqueen hesitancy to ground a ball kicked through into the in goal, Kathryn showed the value of doing the small things by following through and scored an opportunistic try to make it 25 – 3 and the final score. Other positive signs to take away were ET’s and Marshii’s involvement. ET showed glimpses that indicated she isn’t far away from form and Marshii’s crash and barge had a noticeable effect on our attack, stiffening it right up. She was so hard to bring down. If there is something to take out of this game to improve it is that in a match we are winning, we still have to recognise when we need to switch-up and change our strategy. Splitting our forwards in the first half was very effective and had an effect on the Viqueen defensive line which allowed our backs to take advantage of. In the second half when Viqueens got used to what were doing it would have probably been better to change back to hitting the ball up the middle in tighter to tire and hurt the defence before shifting out wide again. In the wrap-up, it was important that we won to get the completion points, but it was also important to win the way we did. We executed a game plan while all doing our individual jobs. The key from here will be to build on this. Ladies, it looks like we’ve finally got our mojo back and we can start to sense that winning feeling again. |
