UWIC denied double by Hartpury

UWIC’s women easily defeat Loughborough, but the men’s side can’t recover from a first-half red card against Hartpury.

BUSA Rugby Union
Championship Finals
April 25 2007, Twickenham

Women’s Final:
Loughborough 5 - UWIC 27

The women's Championship final was never likely to be quite as one-sided as last year’s match, in which UWIC defeated Birmingham 71-7, but Loughborough were always on the back foot against a determined and well-organised UWIC side that demonstrated impressive handling skills.

Straight from the kick-off the Welsh side were on the attack, not letting Loughborough out of their own half for more than ten minutes. They wasted several scoring chances, including a missed penalty from Aimee Young, before the opening try finally arrived after thirteen minutes.
UWIC’s superior scrummaging allowed them first to force a Loughborough scrum five metres out round by 90 degrees to earn a UWIC put-in, then slowly push the subsequent scrum forward to give captain Helen Amos the simple task of touching the ball down on the line, with Young missing the conversion.

Excellent offloading in the tackle nearly brought UWIC more points, but it was once again the forwards who were responsible for the second try. This time Amos was at the back of a driving maul after 28 minutes, again left with the simple task of putting the ball down having reached the line. Young produced a fine kick for what was to be her only successful conversion.

As the first half drew to a close, the Midlanders threatened to force their way back into the game with several spells of possession, but they were not making any ground. The pressure put on by the UWIC defence paid dividends, as a Loughborough knock-on allowed wing Shelley Barr to run in a try from her own half and take the half-time score to 17-0.

The rain began to come down at Twickenham as the second half started, but although the weather had changed, the shape of the game had not. UWIC turned the screw and after just four minutes scrum-half Amy Day set up Barr for her second try.

Amos was stopped inches short of a hat-trick with fifteen minutes left, but support was there and moments later flanker Carys John was on hand to dive over the line. Loughborough were determined not to finish the game with no points on the board, and had the final word as the match went into injury time thanks to wing Joanne Kirkby’s try.

Men’s Final:
UWIC 14
UWE Hartpury 27

When these two sides met in Cardiff in February in the league stage of the competition, the referee dished out one red and four yellow cards, and poor discipline once again let UWIC down to make a difficult match even harder.
Hartpury had enough quality to take advantage of their opponents’ generosity, but took a long time to kill the game off.

Things started well enough for the Welsh students, with fly-half Sam Osborne unconvincingly but accurately striking a penalty through the posts after two minutes. Opposite number Tim Stevenson tried to pull things level with a drop-goal, but just missed the target.

Hartpury became adventurous, being happy to run the ball from deep inside their own half and finding gaps in the UWIC defence. Full-back Tom Jarvis entered the line to find one such gap on the UWIC 22 and the cover defence could not reach him before the try-line.

Stevenson’s conversion and a subsequent penalty made the score 10-3, although it should have been more, with Hartpury’s penalty only coming after flanker Ejike Uzoigwe wasted a glorious opportunity, turning inside when a simple pass would have set up the try.

If UWIC thought their task was hard at this point, it was about to get even tougher. First Alan Awcock was sin-binned for taking a Hartpury player in the air from the restart, before a moment of madness left UWIC with only thirteen players left on the pitch. Captain Steve Facey was the guilty party, spotted by the touch judge head-butting one of his opponents, leaving referee Nick Williams little option but to show Facey the red card.

Hartpury looked to add more points straight away, but prop Chris Turner was denied a try thanks to an accidental offside. UWIC cleared their lines, and despite being two men down, worked their way back into the match. Osborne brought his side to within four points, but missed two kicks during the first half, as well as one early in the second.
Osborne’s miss as the start of the second half proved crucial, as Hartpury immediately attacked. After a driving maul was well stopped by the UWIC defence, the ball was given to the backs and Stevenson put Zimbabwe sevens player Daniel Hondo in under the posts.

UWIC would not give up and were given renewed hope as Uzoigwe was shown a yellow card to make the sides temporarily even in numbers. Matt McLean was given the kicking duties and added three points to make the score 17-9.

The poor form of Osborne spread from his feet to his hands as he dropped a simple pass on halfway to allow Hartpury to come forward. Scrum-half David Walshe found Peter Swatkins running a great angle cutting inside from his wing, and Swatkins showed good pace to score the try. Stevenson converted and added a penalty five minutes later to give Hartpury a comfortable cushion with 20 minutes left.

The lead was quickly reduced as Alan Awcock finished off a blistering UWIC counter-attack, and confidence spread throughout the side as they pushed for two more converted tries. More breathtaking rugby got them within yards of the Hartpury line again, but they couldn’t find a way through and the Gloucestershire side held on for their first ever BUSA Rugby Union Championship victory, following up the second team’s triumph in the BUSA Shield earlier in the day.
“It’s been a long hard season, we really have put the effort in and it’s great to get the rewards at the end of it,” said Stevenson, a second year Sports Conditioning and Coaching student. “It’s a great team performance, we gave them respect, but we worked hard and we knew we could beat them.”

UWIC Director of Rugby Chris Davey was philosophical about his side’s defeat: “We’re disappointed obviously, but I thought we stuck to our task – it was a big, big effort once we went down to fourteen men. It wasn’t to be today and we can’t have any complaints – they took their chances very well.”

Davey added that he thought the officials had a good game, and had no complaints about the red card shown to captain Steve Facey.
“He’s absolutely devastated, absolutely gutted. These things happen.”

by Geraint Tucker - May 2007