THE girls of Crediton Rugby Club’s Under 15’s side took to the field in a potentially tough season opener against a traditionally very strong Winscombe side on Sunday, September 8.

The girls had chosen to take up the offer of a game from the Somerset side to test themselves after a long pre-season on the training ground.

On a glorious late summer afternoon the girls went to work immediately and had opened up a 15-0 lead within the first 15 minutes of the game. They ran strongly with the ball, showing some fantastic inter passing and had two or three line breaking runs to score or set up a scoring position.

Winscombe started to come back into the game but the Crediton girls held firm and on more than one occasion simply refused to yield to the pressure, forcing the home side back or holding them on the try line to force a five-yard scrum.

This played into Crediton’s hands as they had the superior scrum and, more often than not, won any contested scrum ball. This superiority from the set piece, aligned with some good rucking and a continuation of great running and passing allowed the young Black and Amber’s to cross over with two more tries - one with a conversion added - to end a brilliant first half display 27-0 to the good.

For the second half, as had been agreed between the coaches and the girls, a lot of positional changes were made.

This was in order to introduce last year’s Under 13’s to “positional” rugby and to try more experienced girls in new positions they’d asked to have a go at.

This, combined with an early injury, led to a more disjointed display from the Devon-based team and Winscombe applied much more pressure, especially in the rucks, which they now dominated and used very effectively to gain their first two tries of the game before Crediton could hit back with another try of their own.

With the crowd now right behind them the Winscombe girls got the bit between their collective teeth and much of the second half was played in the Crediton half, but a combination of excellent tackling and pressure defence led to a mistake from the girls in black and white from which Crediton capitalised on for a superb breakaway try.

The next score of the game went the way of Winscombe but, unfortunately, time ran out with Crediton deep in their opponents territory looking for the score that would have allowed them to equal the Somerset sides second half try count.

However, with the game finishing 37-19 to Crediton, the girls were delighted to take the victory.

The squad’s coaches were equally delighted with the performance, commenting that: “It was a perfect result for us really. The girls got the win that they deserved with some great play in places, but the strong opposition showed some us some areas that we need to improve on. And, credit to the girls, they highlighted this to us, requesting that we concentrate on these areas in our next training session.”

The coaches finished by adding: “Thanks to the girls for their efforts today. They have shown enthusiasm and hard work throughout pre-season so it was great to be able to see all of that start to come together with a hard fought win against a good side.

“We’d also like to especially thank the girls that are either new to rugby this year or are building up confidence before playing but still made the long trip east.

“We had seven or eight of the squad join us who had just come along to be part of the day and support their team-mates and with that kind of togetherness amongst them all it can only bode well for a successful season.”