LADIES LOSE AT WIMBLEDON

DESPITE a rousing finish and running in five tries, the Guernsey Ladies side are still searching for their first win since going up to Championship Two South-West.
Deprived of several injured players they went down to a 68-31 defeat at Wimbledon who led 37-12 at the half-time break.
Jemma Crouse scored three tries and landed three conversions, while there was a try apiece for Fiona Power and Justeen Baker.

‘Ultimately we were really pleased with scoring five tries and gaining the try bonus point, not an easy achievement away from home,’ said their coach Chris Griffiths.
The team travelled without Fi Ashworth, Chelsie Blondel, Vicki Rang, Rachel Merrien and Heidi Mahy and yet they might have won but for some poor defending that was nowhere near the standard against Newbury.
‘We felt there was a genuine opportunity to win this game,’ said the coach.
‘From a possession point of view I felt we certainly had the lions share and I truly believe we played the better, more structured rugby, which included another very dominant display in the scrums and the line outs also went really well.
‘However, we have to hold our hands up and admit that we were once again poor in defending out wide and a lot of Wimbledon’s tries came from turnover ball.
‘A good example of this is where we had worked brilliantly up the pitch through many well controlled phases to get within five metres of their try line only to have the ball stolen at a ruck which they then ran all to easily all the way back down our right wing to score in the corner, very frustrating and frankly one feels the story of our season so far.’
Griffiths was happy to recognise the superior efforts of Wimbledon.
‘Credit to Wimbledon though as they did make the most of the possession they had and were very good at offloading out of the tackle and were clinical at finishing off their chances.
‘But I don’t believe the gulf in the final scoreline reflects truly the distance in quality between the two sides.
‘From our point of view we looked good going forward particularly when we played our systems well, but we did leave at least another two or three tries out there which should have been scored, with one try deemed by the referee to have been knocked on over the line as Justeen Baker dived over and on more than one occasion massive overlaps that we had worked so well to create simply weren’t used when they should have been.’
Griffiths says it is time to simply dig in and believe the reward for hard work will come.
‘Without sounding like a broken record we will be working hard in training over the next few weeks to try and sort out our problems defensively.
‘There have been small improvements in every game and we are getting stronger and there are lots of positives, finally getting a try bonus point proves this and puts us one step closer to getting the win we crave.
‘The home game against Cullumpton on 2 December will be massive for us and we will be targeting that game to do everything we can to get our first win.
‘I have to reiterate that the coaches and players are still remaining very positive and spirits are not dampened despite some of the big scores being posted against us.
‘The way I see it, of the six games so far this season four have been difficult away games and the home games have included playing top of the league Newbury and a very strong Guildford side so it has been a particularly tough start but with more home games to come and hopefully with all of our key players back in action for the next game we can start to make some in roads into this league.
‘There is strong evidence there that we are going in the right direction and I am absolutely convinced there will be better days ahead.’