It’s round 3 of the Womens NL1 and the Valley Red Ladies take on Hong Kong Cricket Club at Happy Valley
The HKCC Ladies soon made it apparent that they were in it to win it after last week’s literally last kick of the match defeat to Scottish Kukris. The undefeated Valley Red Ladies, who won their last game 42-10, were full of confidence that they could make it three wins out of three. Anita Vogel reports on a fantastic game.
An initial intense and powerful surge by HKCC, saw the Valley Red Ladies pushed back into their 22, but the Red’s managed to defend the line and exerting some pressure won the ball back and worked their way to the half way line. A see-sawing half saw both sides attack and stoutly defend their lines until Valley conceded a penalty deep in their own half. This time the hard working HKCC ladies took advantage to score the opening try.
From the restart, the Valley Ladies regained possession, working through several phases of the ball to probe deeply into HKCC’s half. The Valley forwards then combined for a classic pick and go as captain Ci Wong evened out the scores.
For the spectators on the sideline this was an exciting match between two evenly matched opponents with both sides working tirelessly to exploit any slight advantage or mistake. A great kick and chase from Valley speedster Zoe Schmidt, almost saw Valley break the deadlock, but it was HKCC who won the forward power struggle and scored their second try to lead 10-5 at half-time.
Re-energised after the break Valley attacked again and after a string of penalties and a yellow card for HKCC, Red’s Aggie Au Yeung and the forward pack battled their way to the HKCC try line and the score was tied at 10-10.
The last 20 minutes saw the fiercely contested match swing slightly one way then the other as both sides fought back and forth with only small errors allowing a glimpse of a chance of a break through. HKCC had most of the possession, but stout defense from the Reds was not allowing much gain and tiring out the HKCC attack.
With 5 minutes to go it was still anybody’s game, a penalty and a quick tap from captain Ci Wong saw Valley to the 5m line. Their two previous tries came from aggressive pick and go play and with HKCC looking for that, Valley put the ball out wide to Lewis Wong, who scored the game’s final try between the posts, which made it easy for Kay Wong to convert.
Valley Red 17-10 HKCC
@ Happy Valley, Kick-off: 18:00