Durham Ladies secure first victory of Championship campaign over East Midlands RFU

Durham Ladies secure first victory of Championship campaign over East Midlands RFU

Durham Ladies secure a 29-7 victory away to East Midlands RFU in the second round of the Gill Burns Championship fixtures.

Durham travelled to Peterborough Rugby Club on Saturday to take on East Midlands Ladies.

The game kicked off to an early scoring start for the visitors as a dummy off the back of a ruck by Claudia Macdonald set her away from the half line with pace behind her to cross under the posts, converted by Kirsty Paterson to lead 7-0.

Durham spent the majority of their visiting eighty minutes set up inside the East Midlands half.

Despite a number of penalties in the hosts favour, the Durham Ladies remained reactive and physical to limit the oppositions chances at attack.

Macdonald proved an asset to the side as she dominated the forwards from scrum half to control play and cross the line a twice more throughout the game.

Chris Jones, Durham Ladies Coach, said: “Today was a win for players as individuals and as a team.

“There is still plenty of room for improvement, and we are by no means a finished article but today we showed that we are capable of good things.”

Although the visitors missed out on a handful of scoring opportunities the victory was a comfortable and positive result.

Dave Addison, Durham Ladies Coach commented on the game from footage, saying: “We demonstrated a very physical game, showing how powerful we are as a team.

“Our tackling was very good and the hosts could not handle that.

“We scored five very good tries, moved the ball into space, set up good running lines off scrum half and fly half and executed our set piece.”

Other scores during the game came from forward of the match, Lauren Rigby, a try out wide from back of the match, Ursula Hardy and two more points from Paterson’s boot.

This week’s game saw another four debutants take to the field and receive their Durham County pin badge, including; Rachael Knight, MacKenzie Thomas, Danielle Coulton, Chelsea Burger and a further two County Caps handed out to Alex Webster and Clarissa Murphy for five Championship appearances.

This week’s game saw another four debutants take to the field and receive their Durham County pin badge, including; Rachael Knight, MacKenzie Thomas, Danielle Coulton, Chelsea Burger and a further two County Caps handed out to Alex Webster and Clarissa Murphy for five Championship appearances.

The Ladies go on to their final game of the pool stages with an away trip to North Midlands RFU on Sunday at the University of Birmingham, kicking off at 2pm.