Hornettes ladies suffered a narrow home defeat at the hands of St Mary’s Old Boys.

HORNETTES ladies hosted St Mary’s Old Boys and were narrowly beaten in only the second defeat of the season.

The weather was dreadful with a combination of driving rain and hail, mixed in with a bitter cold wind. The pitch was heavy underfoot, but despite this both teams tried to play adventurous rugby.

For most of the first-half, Hornettes were on the attack and dominated the territory, but could not make the final pass tell.

St Mary’s had a game plan which involved short inside passes and runners coming in at pace to change the angle of attack.

This is exactly what happened on the stroke of half-time when a missed tackle allowed a runner to make 60 metres to score under the posts. The conversion was good and at half-time the Hornettes were 0-7 down.

The second half saw Hornettes defending for long periods of time. The defence held and from a loose ball, MJ Jenkins kicked the ball behind the St Mary’s back line and Hornettes gained some front foot ball.

Charlotte Cooper Cox was held up over the line and it looked as if it was not to be their day. However, from turnover ball, Hornettes managed to hold all passes and draw the St Mary’s defence out of place, allowing MJ Jenkins to score in the corner.

This gave Hornettes renewed belief for the last 10 minutes of the game and they were more direct with their lines of attack and much closer in their support play.

The last play of the game had St Mary’s on the attack and they created an overlap to score out wide taking the final score to 5-12.