Girls Rugby - Stromness Academy v Wick High School

Stromness, 13th May 2013

Stromness Academy competed in their first ever girls rugby match when they hosted Wick High School on Monday afternoon. The slightly older and more experienced Wick team ran out eventual winners - 10 tries to 4 in a close, entertaining match. Stromness had a squad of 21 girls from S1 & S2 in this 13 a side match against a Wick team made up of S2 & S3 girls.

Having only been training since Christmas and playing in their first ever match, Stromness Academy started slowly but steadily improved in confidence as the match progressed. Beth Thompson and Tamara Rhodes-Schofield showed great handling of the ball to try and get the ball wide into space and this created a great try for Captain Erina Brown to power through the Wick defence to score under the posts. As the third progressed, there was some excellent tackling from Kelsey Harvey, Keira Johnston and Hannah Stead who showed no fear in tackling their bigger opponents. Despite some solid defence from Stromness with a number of great tackles, this couldn't stop Wick from scoring 3 tries by the end of the first half.

After making a couple of substitutions, Stromness started the second half brightly and had the majority of the possession. Jenna Young and Tamara made some excellent jinking runs to create space for Erin Montgomery to sprint to the corner to score a well worked try. By now, all of the girls were getting stuck in and making committed tackles showing excellent technique and good desire. However, Wick had some really strong, powerful runners who managed to break through the Stromness tackles to score 7 more tries in the final part of the game. Stromness Academy dug deep and showed good fitness levels to finish strongly and scored 2 more great tries from Keira Johnston and Kelsey Harvey. The final score was 10 - 4

The Stromness girls really enjoyed their first ever competitive match and can take a number of positives from the experience. You could tell that they have been training hard with Mr Watt & Fraser McNaughton to learn the basic skills and tactics needed to play to such a high standard in this game.

“It was great to see a competitive girls match taking place today, a fitting reward for the Stromness girls after their hard work over the past few months.  The game was a real buzz of excitement for the girls who played very well showing great passing and offloading skills whilst not shying away from the contact area.  This game will give the girls the confidence and experience to develop further and with continued commitment it would be great to have fixtures on a regular basis.  Credit to Mr Berry & Colin Sangster for pulling the organisation together and we all look forward to the next fixture.”

Bruce Ruthven, Orkney Rugby Development Officer