Tynedale RFC Ladies Touch Team travelled to play Darlington Mowden Park on Friday 28th September 2018 in our first match of the Thornton Hickeys Winter League.

We took a strong team of 11 players and our much loved 'Golden Girls' strip. The games are 6-a-side and we worked our rolling subs in two pods of 4 and a pod of 3 so that we constantly had fresh legs coming onto the pitch to keep up with the relentless fast pace of Touch Rugby.

We started strongly with a try in the first few minutes and kept that up through out the first half scoring plenty more tries. DMP brought on new players at half time and came back at us much quicker than they had been. We had to work hard in defence to keep them out and succeeded for the most part, only conceding one penalty try when an offside player made the touch. We continued to put the ball down over the line with some amazing team and individual skills. The final score was 1-13 to us.

It is satisfying to travel home having put into practise all our training and some of the new strategies we learnt only last week.

Touch Rugby is a game for all, whether you want to keep playing but don't want to play contact, are completely new to rugby and have never thrown a ball backwards before or maybe you just want to freshen up a boring fitness regime with something different. Whatever your reasons you are welcome to join us at Tynedale RFC on Thursday evenings to find out more. The ages of players in the team last night varied from 16 to 54 and we had mothers and daughters on the pitch playing together.

We would like to thank Tynedale RFC for their support of women getting involved in playing and are very glad that this thanks comes with a great first league win.

Annie Lees
Tynedale Ladies Touch