The penultimate round of the first half of the Women’s Premiership sees six teams in contention for the top four and a place in the ‘reduced’ Premiership for the second half of the season.
The other four sides will be relegated to the Women’s Premiership Development league – the aim apparently is to drive competitive improvement across the whole league. But will a current or potential HK international player want to play in the ‘Development’ league? Hardly likely to improve their chances of being picked…
Sadly the chances are that the gap between the top four and the second four will get even wider as the top four improve and the better players in the development league are cherry picked by the top teams.
In this week’s games it’s third versus fifth as USRC Tigers – their tails up after a hard fought draw with Gai Wu Falcons last week – face off against CWB Phoenix (4pm, HK Education University). Gai Wu play Tai Po Dragons (KGV, 4:30m), fresh from a second win in this league. Kowloon pay a visit to table toppers Valley Black (14:30pm, Happy Valley) while HKFC Ice host City Sparkle at HK Football Club (6pm).
Tigers coach Fan Shun Kei, who knows the meaning of success as a player, including with the Hong Kong national sevens team, is full of confidence after last week’s draw.
“Our physicality and attacking were excellent. We need to keep up that physicality to cope with the last 20-25 minutes of a game, when tiredness comes in – especially later in the year, when we play against Valley or Gai Wu. In the last game, it was the opposite – we came back strongest in the final 10 minutes,” said Fan.
“The team understands that that outstanding performance sets the standard. Nothing will be much different this week in terms of our game plan. If we execute right and make the tackles, then this team can be dangerous in the league. It’s a real improvement on last year.”
The Tigers will be missing three key players this week: last game’s key performer Hebe Talas was concussed playing on Sunday and sits out for a week, while winger Bena Yu Bo Yan and inside centre Lo Wai Yan have commitments.
On the plus side, Natasha Olson-Thorne is back, which Fan says give the side more solidity. “We expect Causeway Bay to come at us. To be among the top four, they really need this game. The first half will be very exciting, as everyone is fresh. They will go hard and we expect to have to deal with their attack,” relishes Fan.
Causeway Bay come into the game off the back of losses to Gai Wu and Valley, and a surprising 10-7 reverse to Tai Po, missing the success they had at the start of the season.
Chris Lin is especially unhappy with last week’s result. “We were missing quite a few players, and several of our squad were just off playing in NL2 games,” he explained. “We made mistakes in defence that resulted in costly penalties, so that’s something we’ve been focusing on this week. If we can hold on to the ball and reduce handling mistakes to improve defensively, we have the backs and the pack to go forward and score.”
“Tigers have strong ball carriers, so we aim to keep the defence error-free and then try to attack the wide lines,” added Lin who focused on what his side should be aiming for in this game, to capture a spot in the Premiership second half.
“We aim to beat Tigers, but to feel confident of playing in the top half after the break, we need to at least pick up two bonus points [for four tries scored, and a loss by seven points or fewer]. I’m positive about our prospects of playing in the top four,” said Lin.
His side sees the return of two key players who missed the previous game: Martini IP Ka Ling, at inside centre, and Ng Wing Yee, who has recovered from her spine problem. Lin says that both are greatly respected by the rest of the team and will inspire confidence through their example as well as their ball-carrying.
Additional reporting/images: HKRU