I think this might be close but also think our forwards will be strong enough to secure plenty of good possession. Also think our girls will be keen to start better than last week, so, LL 17 - 24 Chiefs.
Weather showery and some breeze so tricky conditions. Important the girls back up last weeks second half performance. Glad Tessier in the centre and hope Flo is back to form after last week in the first half. Loughborough 18 Chiefs 34
Too many errors in the first Half. Not sure we deserved the win as one of our tries a bit suspect Scrum time could easily have had some more pens.. 3 points away is OK
Another draw at Franklin's Gardens that we came within inches of winning, albeit a very different type of game. Loughborough Lightning played better than I expected, while Chiefs played somewhat below my expectations. This was a game that we should have won and, but for a knock-on on their try line in the 80th minute, we would have won.
It was a good effort by LL, their 10 kicked very well in open play which kept them playing in the right part of the pitch. By contrast, I felt that Liv McGoverne or Alex Tessier could have kicked a bit more when it was clear that we were struggling to make headway with the ball in hand. Our backline looked pretty clunky, too often passing the ball in frantic desperation rather than as part of a slick attacking move. Claudia M-M had some excellent runs down the wing and was unlucky not to have made it over the line in the first half. I was impressed by Abby Duguid. She looked very strong in the carry and delivered an epic hand-off, but it was sad to see Linde vdV go off with a head injury - hopefully she's ok, butI suspect she'll be out of the reckoning for a while. Our two props, Demi and DaLeaka both put in a mighty shift, playing the full game. We didn't use either of our less experienced substitute props and in that respect we missed having Amy Rule and Hope Rogers on the team sheet. Nevertheless, it's pretty impressive to see a prop who's been on the pitch for 78 minutes charge nearly half the length of the field with the ball. I don't think we capitalised fully on our advantage at scrum time. Rather than keeping the ball at Maddie's feet and going for a secondary shove, Flo tended to whip the ball out as soon as it was available. To their credit, the LL driving maul was very well organised and we struggled to deal with it, and their tighthead prop was a veritable wrecking ball, blasting through the middle of our defence on several occasions.
When the final whistle blew the LL fans were overjoyed, partly from relief that we'd fluffed our chance of getting a winning score, but also partly, I suspect, because they thought a draw was a good result for them. As a Chiefs fan, though, I felt a little deflated.
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