Eton Manor Women travelled to Sudbury to take on the league leaders on Sunday. After a great women’s lunch the wet and freezing conditions were waiting for the Manor women to rise to the challenge of taking on a side who, like us, are newly promoted and have grown from a strong girls section. Within thirty seconds Manor were on the march with an impressive line break by Tahnika Talbot and a brilliant supporting run by Charlie Galloway - the offload saw Charlie score the first try of the match in first play. Lily Collister converted to put Manor 0-7 up.
The match then settled into an arm wrestle with Sudbury pushing to get into the Manor territory. Just before half time saw Sudbury score to make it 5-7.
The second half saw Manor conceding a fair few penalties but even with players in the bin we held Sudbury at 5-7. Finally the hosts pushed it over the line to go 10-7 up.
Manor were on the march then, and knocked on the door for most of the half until a bad injury saw the ref call the match with 8 minutes to go. Manor left defeated but proud. Who knows what we could have achieved in that last eight minutes.
Our good wishes go to the player who was badly injured - we hope she is ok and we send our love. Less love goes to the three or four male supporters for the home team who abused our players and behaved in a disappointingly misogynistic way. In what was a great day for women’s rugby they let their club down.