D1 Preview: Chicago over Chicago NS 23-8

See all the current standings from D1 Club here.

from Liz Entwhistle:

CWRFC over North Shore 23-8. We had stellar performances from flyhalf Esther Anderson (amazing goal kicking!), #8 Leslie Johnson (she had 3 awesome breakaways I can remember!), wing Darcy Leslie (fresh back from captaining The Force football team) and wing Martha Dove. It was a balance of good forward work cleaning up rucks and holding scrums against a much larger pack, keeping our cool and then getting the ball out through the backs. 3 scores from the wings? PERFECT!

Scoring as follows:
Esther Anderson penalty at 20 minutes, 3 points (1/1)
Esther Anderson penalty at 32 minutes, 3 points (2/2)
North Shore penalty at 40 minutes, 3 points

6-3 Chicago lead at half

North Shore try at 50ish minutes, 5 points
Darcy Leslie try (Esther conversion 1/1)
Martha Dove try (Esther unconverted 1/2)
Darcy Leslie try (Esther unconverted 1/3)

23-8 final – 80 minutes of COMPLETE TEAM RUGBY! Conditioning paid off as did multiphase play that allowed us to move the ball, retain possesion and take advantage of numerous penalties against the opposing side. The team kept its cool and didn’t overcommit to rucks while NS couldn’t produce clean ball to their backs.

B-side game saw a great effort by a ton of new rookies. I personally enjoyed Sarah’s smashing fullback debut saving a few NS tries: particularly one their whole team gave up chasing and Sarah got the girl into touch about 1m out from scoring.

Katie Williams scored in the first half from the scrumhalf position in her side-stepping Katie style. Liz Entwhistle missed a dropkick attempt from the sideline for the conversion. We went into the half with a 5-0 lead. Second row/#8 Entwhistle scored early in the 2nd half but missed a tough conversion again. We took a 10-0 lead and NS countered to a 10-10 final (though Theresa Kane definitely got robbed on her chip and chase from the flanker position; ref called her on playing the man when she was chasing even though she was surrounded by 5 “mardi gras” jerseys).

Please come out for our next few home games – 9/10 against Austin at 10am at Wilson Pk and 9/17 against Detroit 1:30pm at Diversey as we continue our quest to Nationals!

Cheers,
Liz

See all the current standings from D1 Club here.