Stourbridge Ladies travelled to Tewkesbury for their first ever away match in RFUW League rugby and despite being ravaged by injury they put in a spirited showing.

The ladies were forced to play the whole game with one less player than there hosts so to come away with 20-14 was great effort in the circumstances.

Tewkesbury started best and their much larger and aggressive pack drove Stourbridge back from the kick-off.

The visitors defended desperately and managed to prevent a try by holding the ball up on the line. This was a short reprieve, and from the subsequent scrum, Tewkesbury scored the opening try.

The expected flood of points the hosts expected to appear did not materialise began to find some confidence and some strong running by centres Katie Yates and Charlene Lowrie allowed fly-half Lisa Davies to come wiyhin a whisker of scoring.

Against the run of play the hosts were next to score but this did not dishearten the visitors.

Stour still dominated the open play but too many handling errors and not retaining the ball in the tackle, prevented the ladies from converting their possession into points.

This changed though when Rachel Dark stole the ball from a maul and marauded through the opposition defence and found Lauren Johnson in support, who sucked in their defence and passed back inside to Dark.

A fast ruck set up quick ball to Lisa Davies, who’ s outrageous dummy split the Tewkesbury defence to score under the posts. Barbara Palmieri converted, to make the score 10-7 at the break.

Stour began the second-half with a sense of belief, that even playing eleven against twelve, they could win the game and amzingly they took the lead through Hayley Slimm, which was converted by Palmieri.

The momentum was with Stourbridge and one felt that another score might see off the home team. The Tewkesbury defence remained resolute and the combination of long clearance kicks and the extra player in the backs allowed them to come through the Stourbridge onslaught.

However, a cruel bounce wrong footed the Stourbridge defence, and popped up into a Tewkesbury players arms for her to score and put them back into the lead.

Stourbridge then came under sustained pressure, both the forwards and backs tackled bravely, to keep Stourbridge in the game, but a blind side break by Tewkesbury made the final score 20-14.