Horsham travelled to Worthing on Friday night for their long awaiting final (and only) Pool match in the National cup against a very strong Worthing team. This match was to be the decider of the Pool, with the Winners hosting the Last 16 match against Farnham and the losing team travelling to Sutton and Epsom in the regional Semi Final. With it being a local derby, the game didn’t need any more spice, but adding to it was that 4 of the Horsham girls going to Worthing College and playing with the majority of the Worthing team, College bragging rights were also at stake.
The Worthing ground staff did an incredible job to get the match to go ahead with all the rain that the South had experienced the whole week. Horsham were struggling with injuries with only 16 available for the game, with one of the girls falling foul to a “cow related incident” earlier on in the week and being concussed.
With the home crowd behind them, Worthing came out the stronger of the two teams with Horsham doing well defensively holding Worthing out for as long as they did. The Worthing 9 sniped twice early which was cutting through the Horsham defence, with Lois Martin doing an incredible job to contain her as much as she could. Worthing were playing with a lot of width which was their game plan and the Horsham defence lapsed slightly to give Worthing a 5-0 advantage early in the match.
From the restart, Worthing were able to put pressure on Horsham again. Horsham’s scrum was very solid bearing in mind the last minute changes and call ups to Izzy Dunn and Graceanne Claffey playing their first full matches in the front row. They did so well they were called up to the Sussex squad after the match.
Worthing’s ability to get width on their passing and retain possession was really testing the Horsham defence, Horsham managed to turn the ball over and clear their lines a couple of times but soon after Worthing strung together about 20 phases and Horsham ran out of defenders and Worthing stretched their lead to 10-0
Horsham’s defence then went on the offensive, putting Worthing’s attack on the back foot causing them to spill the ball and Horsham to get into a bit more attacking areas. After incredible pressure from Kacey Matthews and Alina Hillicks, the ball was dropped from Worthing and pounced upon by Freya Bell, a hack through and gather from Bell who showed a clean pair of heels to sprint in from 50m for a try in the corner. With her still trying to gather her breath, she then slotted the conversion from the touch line to bring the score to 10-7.
This boosted Horsham’s confidence and for the rest of the half, they were camped on the Worthing line. With a mixture of a few unforced errors and incredible last ditch defence from Worthing, they kept Horsham out and the half time whistle was blown with the score still at 10-7 at the break.
Worthing started the second half stronger of the 2 teams and the pressure started to tell on Horsham. Worthing’s handling and width in attack was excellent and Horsham couldn’t live with it as Worthing scored two quick unconverted tries to bring the score to 20-7 in their favour. Horsham never gave in, with Tiggy Bellinger and Shay Spice leading the charge. Ella Earle and Tegan Williams continued to power through and some good service from Lois Martin and defence from Emily Darch and Juliana Paul, just wasn’t enough with Worthing wide play allowing them to squeeze over for their 3rd try of the second half and Horsham’s hopes were ended.
For the neutral support, it was one of the best games of rugby to watch. Competitive, hard and running rugby was an incredible game. Hats off to Worthing, whos width and ability to keep the ball for long periods of the match was obviously something they have been working hard on at training and in those conditions was very good. Worthing will go far in the competition playing rugby like that. But Horsham never gave up, they battled to the end and really worked their socks off and were competitive throughout. Best bit of the night, was the absolute respect from each team and thank you to Worthing for their hospitality.
Player of the day was closely contested with Horsham not being able to come to a conclusion as there were so many stand out players and girls that played out of position for the first time and defence was battling the whole game. Notable mentions would be Dunn and Claffey for their front row performances, Lois Martin and Mimi Clifford for their tireless work around the park and Georgia Pearce for her smashing defence at the back. Worthing selected Freya Bell as player of the match, especially after 12 weeks off with a knee injury and being her first game back.