Austin Valkyries vs Houston

Combined write-up by Head Coach of the Austin Valkyries, Meg Pace and Forwards Captain, Traci Schmidtke. The Austin Valkyries took 18 B side players (with a few A side helpers) to Woodlands, TX for our second to last match of the season. Before our match the TCU High School and Houston High School teams matched off. Their game was spirited, well matched and it was wonderful to watch the newest talent in Texas play rugby.

And now the writeups…

This past weekend the Valkyries took a squad down to Houston for a little friendly rugby competition. Unlike the scoring event against the Jazz, I will be unable to provide a complete play by play. Why? you ask. This match was the most back and forth / up and down affair I’ve been in for a long time. I may be wrong, but I don’t think either team scored more than twice without the other side matching. HARC would score, the Valks would tie, the Valks would put another one in, HARC would tie. It was a great match to play in. In the end, Houston prevailed with a tiebreaking try with a minute left for a final score of 40-33. Obviously, with 5 more minutes to work, Austin would have tied it yet again. A few highlights for your edification:

The Valks scrum dominated scrumdowns and lineouts with many significant wins: 2 such early performances allowed a play to the weak side for a score by Heidi. The ref must have decided this was unfair because he allowed (or even encouraged) the Houston scrumhalf to play off side from this point and even awarded two penalties to Houston for an 8 and then a flanker “having their leg set too wide”. Huh?

Kitty played spectacularly at flyhalf and the Kitty to Krafty to Heather line got the ball out to the wing well and gelled quite nicely. On one such play, Pony decided to take it in herself with a nice move to the outside then back in against the fullback for a try from the 50meter. She looked awesome.

Nice goal line defense a couple of times by the scrum – lining up properly and stopping a try with a “held up” ball – good work.

Beautiful kicking day for the Krafters – truly impressive. Great 60 minutes to Jo at prop who was overheard upon finally subbing out “I don’t know how you do this for 80 minutes.” Nice hooking and throwing by Shalay, they didn’t stand a chance. Wonderful aggression by all the new flankers – ya’ll are awesome.

I just wanted to add a few things to Meg’s write up…

A huge thank you for all the players who stepped up this weekend… THall and Amy taking charge of the forwards… Kitty and Heidi commanding the backs… the first 40 minutes was played without either position captain, but the communication and discipline never lacked, so thank you.

It was a very hot sunny day and everyone kept pushing… like Meg said it was a very back and forth game… huge tackles from Angela and Alexis… there was a definite improvement from last weeks mauling with KC.

Clearly the offense was not a problem because we scored 33 points!! Thank you for being patient with me when i was playing scrumhalf, it was definitely fun!