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Match Report: Valley Black 17-0 USRC

Typhoon 3 was not enough to stop the reigning champions from starting off the league with a solid win against the USRC Tigers. After many phases deep in the Tigers half, Bella put first points on the board from a penalty kick 40m from the posts. Then, in open phase play, Bella spotted a gap and dotted through to score under the posts. She nailed the conversion to extend the lead to 10-0 at half time.

The second half saw a superb team try initiated by a turnover from Rocky at the halfway mark. The black ladies demonstrated great skill and teamwork to put it through the hands for Jen Mackay to finish on the other side. Well done to new first team caps Jazz, Rebecca and Jess who had a great run. Congrats to MVPs Sarka, for being relentless and Rocky for three try-saving tackles under pressure.

Decent hit out for first game of the season. Valley Black have bye this week.

Match Reports: HK Scottish

Fielding two teams this season, the Hong Kong Scottish Kukris playing XVs in Women’s NL1 and the Hong Kong Scottish Sekongers playing 10s, both started the season with simultaneous 4:30 kick offs at the Police Club (Kukris v Police) and Tai Hang Tung (Sekongers v Revolution). The Kukris found themselves battling a vastly improved Police team, compared with last season, and with many of the new recruits more familiar with 10s, made little headway against a determined Police defence. At halftime, the Kukris were down 7/0. But with the weather deteriorating to a decidedly Scottish level, the Kukris’s fortunes changed. Sustain pressure brought results, with two corner tries from Yuen Ting and Ellie Ngan Kee. The conversions were unsuccessful, but in spite of a valiant fightback from the Police, Kukris held on start the season with a win.

Over at Tai Hang Tung, Revolution were making the most of their numerous reserves, but did not have it all their own way, with the Sekongers frustrating their attacks and dominating the scrum. As the weather deteriorated, running became more difficult, with the Sekongers positively enjoying the conditions. Tries from Hau Yi, Crystal and Suzi, two of which Suzi converted, allowed the Sekongers to score 19 points, and leave the field in buoyant mood, even though we lost (although we’re not sure of the final score as the referee’s notes were just soggy mush).

All in all a positive start the season.

Police 7-10 Scottish Kukris
@ Police Boundary Street, kick-off: 16:30

HK Scottish Sekongers 19-? Revolution
@Tai Hang Tung, kick-off: 16:30

Match Report: HKCC 29-0 HKFC Fire

After a long, sweaty and tiring pre-season the start of the 2015/16 season has finally arrived. Head coach Alex Tarleton reports on HKCC season debut against HK Football Club Fire.

Match day started off in typical HKCC fashion with traumatic moments even before the season’s first whistle was blown – wrong buses, bus’s breaking down, replacements bus, no pitch booked and some tears (and that was just the coaches…). Finally a full squad of 23 arrived at KGV to warm-up, with time to spare.

With a T3 hoisted as Typhoon Mujigae brought wind and rain, nervous anticipation had the ladies fidgeting and keen to get the match and the season underway!

In the opening few minutes those nerves were very apparent, with HKCC resembling a herd of sheep following the ball around the field. However, a turnover saw summer signing Ashley Brooks make a quick break against the run of play to score a great solo effort from 30 yards out.

The opening score saw the ladies relax, become more settled and started to play the patterns we had been building on in pre season. Our shape was looking very good, our defence unbreakable and our scrum a great attacking platform.

Lynda Nazer having converted from a scrum half to a bustling back rower over the summer added two excellently worked tries, showing great determination to push over for an excellent brace.

The T3 was causing carnage at KGV with plastic bags and bottles invading the pitch, the rain hammering it down, but we went in 15-0 at the break.

The second half began a lot more tighter with HKFC regrouping and playing with a lot more ‘Fire’ as they tried to get back in the game. Both teams knew the next score was vitally important and CC withstood a lot of pressure from their rejuvenated opponents.

With the HKCC defence being pummeled, the ladies showed great character to withstand the pressure and keep FC from registering their first points of the season. Another turnover in the opposition half saw Ashley Brooks score again with Emma Chung adding the conversion to push the score out to 22-0, hopefully sealing the game with the bonus point.

We coaches were frantically signaling to keep up the hard work in defence as the Fire fly-half restarted the game, only for Tinley Wong to break through their defence straight from the kick off for a fifth try with Emma adding the conversion from in-front of the posts.

An excellent afternoon of rugby in testing conditions saw HKCC emerge with a 29-0 opening day bonus point win over HKFC Fire.

Celebrations then began on the side of the pitch and into the night….

Women of the match had to be both Brace Try scorers – Lynda Nazer and Ashley Brooks.

Women’s National League 1: HKCC 29-0 HKFC Fire
@KGV Kick-off: 16:30
HKCC: Kassie Chapel, Joan Yip, Jo Harvey, Katie Rowbottom, Lauren Petersen, Wendy, Lainie Man, Lynda Nazer, Ashley Brooks, Tinley Wong, Yana Dimitrova, Lucy Thomson, Tissia Polycarpe, Diana Li, Stephaine Zhang
Substitutes: Charlotte Berry, Mhairi McCloughlin, Carolyn Champion, Zoe Wong, Emma Chung, Wawa Li, Hoi Yi Li, Nobuko Oda
Tries: Lynda Nazer (2), Ashley Brooks (2), Tinley Wong. Conversions: Emma Chung (2)

Match Report: DB Pirates 5 – 20 CWB Pink

A T3 signal ensured a tough opening day at the ‘office’ for both the Discovery Bay Pirates and CWB Pink as by the 17:15 kick-off time the rain and wind of Typhoon Mujigae had well and truly set in. The Pirates Ladies struggled to field a side, with a lot of the team away, but two HK Scottish 10s players Anna Kam and Tiffany Tse stepped in to ensure the game went ahead. This was the first run out for a lot of the lady Pirates who are rebuilding their team after several players left for University at the end of last season.

In a game played with a lot of heart and enthusiasm, Sienna Stubbs went over to score the Pirates only try, with the new season barely ten minutes old. The Pirates dominated in the scrum during a first half when the weather ensured there were a lot, but were unable to add to their score. While both teams committed valiantly to the scrums and rucks, the conditions ensured that free flowing rugby was at a premium. The second half saw the Pirates front row tire as CWB ran in further tries for a comfortable win.

A tough first game for both teams considering the conditions. The inexperienced Pirates learning lessons that only game time can give will be hard at work on the training pitch over the the next two weeks as they work to improve and meld as a team. Thanks to Anna Kam, Tiffany Tse and Eleanor ‘Jonesy’ Jones for playing with the DB Pirates.

Discovery Bay Pirates are looking for any players from around Discovery Bay and Lantau, anyone 17up looking to join the sisterhood please contact [email protected] no experience required, just passion to learn and play!

DB Pirates 5 – 20 CWB Pink
@ Tai Hang Tun Recreation Ground
DB Pirates: Meg McGrath, Corne Brink, Sienna Stubbs, Rebecca Thomasis, Oorja Goel, Vanessa Kima, Paula Andrea, Shannon Tjon, Anna Kam, Tiffany Tse, Eleanor ‘Jonesy’ Jones.

Edited 6 October, 2015 to include HK Scottish players names

Women’s Rugby Season 15/16 Preview

Women’s Premiership captains: Chan Long Sze Royce, Chloe Mak, Nam Ka Man, Jen Mackay, Jay Ho, Dora Kwok, Mok Ting Yan.

The women’s league structure, which was comprehensively overhauled for the 2014-15 season, sees further tweaks for the 15/16 season as the overall number of teams competing increases from 22-25 across three leagues. Despite the HKRU’s indifference to women’s rugby, it’s been the fastest growing area of the sport locally for several years and with Hong Kong’s women 7s winning in Qingdao recently there’s a lot of excitement ahead of the new season, which starts on 3 October.

The Premiership has grown from six to seven teams with HK Football Club Ice moving up to the top rung of local women’s rugby. The other participating Premiership teams are defending champions Valley Black, Gai Wu, USRC Tigers, Kowloon, SCAA Causeway Bay and Tai Po Dragons. Women’s Rugby Performance Manager Jo Hull and Women’s Rugby Development Manager Sam Feausi are looking to increase that to eight in the 2016/17 season.

One step below Premiership level, the National 15s League has grown by three teams to 11 with HK Scottish, SCAA Causeway Bay 3rds and Revolution joining the competition this season. The National 10s League will feature six teams and continues its role as a bridge for new and younger players looking to integrate into 15-aside competition.

The main change to this season’s competition is the introduction of a new internal representative competition: the Women’s Rugby Super Series – designed to bridge the gap between domestic rugby and the national XVs set-up.

“The Super Series will feature our top 66 players from the domestic league. These players will be split into three Barbarian sides which will play against each other, effectively adding a component of representative rugby apart from the domestic league and just below the national setup. The goal is to better prepare and help transition players to full representative rugby,” said Sam Feausi.

Feausi added that, “The Super Series will give coaches and selectors an opportunity to look at our best players and test combinations with an eye on the coming international season. The teams will primarily be drawn from the Premiership with selectors identifying any players from other competitions that we believe have what it takes to represent the National Team. The Super Series will give more opportunities to the best players in the Premiership to play at an even higher level.”

“We are focused on introducing more of a performance aspect into our women’s club system this season. The Premiership is the pinnacle of Women’s rugby and we want it to be geared towards high performance, as we are ultimately targeting qualification for Women’s Rugby World Cup in future.” said Jo Hull.

The three leagues promise to serve up some incredible rugby with defending champions Valley Black and perennial contenders Gai Wu shaping up as the favourites once again in the Premiership race. Gai Wu have 11 players involved with the national sevens team, Valley Black have nine. SCAA Causeway Bay is the only club to field a team in all three of the senior woman’s competitions.

“This is set to be the biggest club woman’s competition we have ever had in Hong Kong,” said Feausi. “With 25 teams across three highly competitive leagues it will be interesting to see who will be pushing hard for a place in the Premiership and spots in the Super Series teams. On the other end of the scale, we will be monitoring how successful clubs are at introducing beginners and less experienced players to rugby and transitioning them from National 10s to higher levels of competition.”

The Women’s Premiership will kick off on 3 October as part of the HKRU Super Saturday league launch at Kings Park. The National 15’s and Women’s 10s also kick-off this weekend and you can find the complete fixture list here.

Source HKRU, image courtesy of HKRU

Women’s Rugby Fixtures – 3 October, 2015

HK Cricket Match Reports: Monday, 29 September 2015

One-Day Premier League
One Premier League match was played at Mission Road on the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday with the HKCA Under-19s prevailing by four wickets over PACC in an unbelievable finish.

PACC started positively after winning the toss and Hussain Butt and Daniyal Bukhari shared an opening partnership of 50 before Waqas Khan bowled Butt for 17. Bukhari continued to prosper and he and Skhawat Ali put on another 84-runs for the 4th wicket before Bukhari departed for 85. Skhawat (58) and Aizaz Khan (34) then added another 69 runs before both batsmen fell with the score on 225. The PACC innings eventually closed on 6/245 from their 50 overs.

The HKCA Under-19s innings also got off to a good start with Niraj Patwari and Raag Kapur putting 39 runs on the board for the first wicket but both batsmen were back in the pavilion before the score had reached 50. Akbar Khan then scored 51 but his was the fourth wicket to fall as the HKCA U19s score reached 114. Waqas Khan (56), Giacomo Lamplough (20) and Mohammad Awais (43*) batted extremely well to keep the scoreboard ticking over but by the end of the 49th over, 21 runs were still needed for victory. Two sixes in the final over, bowled by Mohammad Kamran, left the U19s needing to score four off the last ball but they could only manage two and the PACC players started celebrating their win. However, the bowler had failed to inform umpire Clive Howard that he was changing to bowl around the wicket so the umpire called a no-ball, meaning the scores were now tied. With the final ball having to be re-bowled, and a free hit on offer, the batsmen scampered through for a quick run, despite the facing batsman being cleaned bowled, to give the HKCA U19s victory by four wickets.
At Mission Road: PACC 6/245 from 50 overs lost to HKCA Under-19s 6/246 from 50 overs by 4 wickets

HK Women’s Cricket Match Reports: Sunday, 27 September 2015

Women’s T20 Cup
After a one-week break, action in the Women’s T20 Cup competition resumed in earnest on Sunday.

DLSWCC’s Shanzeen Shahzad brought up the first century of the women’s season with an unbeaten 114 against USRC in the second T20 match at PKVR Reservoir. Shanzeen shared an impressive unbroken opening partnership of 206 with Manpreet Kaur who finished on 68 not out. Shanzeen then grabbed 3/14 as USRC was dismissed for 51 in the 14th over.
At PKVR Reservoir: DLSWCC Wasps 0/206 from 20 overs beat USRC 51 from 13.3 overs by 155 runs.

In a derby match at Hong Kong Cricket Club, Willow Wielders had no trouble dispensing of Cavaliers by a 101-runs. Willow Wielders batted well to score 9/131 from their 20 overs with Chan Sau Ha hitting 31 and Mariko Hill top-scoring with 50. Cavaliers’ skipper Emma Lai was the pick of the bowlers with 4/17 from her four over spell.

The Cavaliers’ batters had no answer to the Willow Wielders bowling attack and they were skittled for just 30 in 12 overs. Starring with the ball was Marina Lamplough with 6/13 – George will be chuffed.
At HKCC: HKCC Willow Wielders 9/131 from 20 overs beat HKCC Cavaliers 30 from 12 overs by 101 runs.

KCC Maidens enjoyed a 9-wicket victory over PACC in the first match of the day at PKVR Reservoir. Batted first, the PACC Women scored 4/78 from their 20 overs with sundries contribution 59. The Maidens opening pair scored 73 runs with Reenu Gill hitting 26 and Anum Ahmad finishing unbeaten on 24.
At PKVR Reservoir: PACC 4/78 from 20 overs lost to KCC Maidens 1/79 from 11 overs by 9 wickets.