Kent women arrived at Aylesbury RFC after navigating the M25 to face a Buckinghamshire Women’s team who were keen to start their Gill Burns County Championship campaign for 2022.
10 minutes before the match started, the heavens opened and the rain was here for the rest of the afternoon. Similar to last week the Kent women started slowly and found themselves defending from the off. Under intense pressure it was only time before Bucks found a gap in the Kent defence and went over for the first try of the match. The conversion was good so Kent trailed by 7.
From the restart Bucks were on the offensive again and after only five more minutes they had managed to break through and score an unconverted try. Conceding these two quick scores gave the Kent women the impetus to start to play in the way they had finished off the last game and they were soon on the attack. The Bucks woman thwarted these attacks by any means possible and the Kent women were just unable to cross the line. Just on the break of half time Kent conceded a penalty in front of their posts, up stepped the Bucks kicker and slotted over giving Bucks Woman a 15-0 lead.
The second half started in a similar manner to how the first half finished with the Kent Women on the offensive but just not being able to cross the line. The Bucks women were resolute in their defence and when they had a chance to break out they managed to get into the Kent 22 and came away with 3 points from a converted penalty. Score now 18-0 to Bucks.
For the rest of the second half majority of the play was in the Buckinghamshire half of the pitch and it was surely only time before Kent recorded their first points of the day. The first score for Kent came when Rachael Coates drove over after several close attacks had been repelled, a difficult conversion not quite having the legs to go over the cross bar, score 18-5 to Bucks. This score made the vocal Kent travelling supporters even louder and this in turn energised the Kent women.
From the restart they were straight back into their stride and were on the attack, however, the next score didn’t come until after another agonising 12 minutes of defiance from the Bucks team, with Allisha Coulson going over out wide for an unconverted try.
The roof of the stand was now lifting off as the Kent supporters volume ramped up several more decibels as they could sense that there was another score to be had by Kent; as all of the play was now in the Bucks red zone. After several thwarted attacks the traveling team were rewarded again when Allisha went over for her second try of the match. The conversion dropping just short meant the score was now 18-15 to Bucks women. The referee decided that this was to be the last play of the game and blew his whistle for full time preventing the growing in confidence Kent team going for the win that they were looking for.
This was another tremendous squad performance as demonstrated by the 22 selected players fighting back from 18-0 down to finish 18-15, but also by those not selected this weekend travelling to Aylesbury to give their support to the team.
Kent women now move on to their final pool game at home against Surrey. This is at Charlton Park RFC on Sunday 22nd May, kick off 2.00pm.
