Female Rugby Team are North West College Champions!!

Leigh Sports Village hosted the inaugural North West Women’s Further Education & Higher Education Touch Rugby League festival on Wednesday November 17.

Over 120 female participants took to Leigh Centurions’ main stadium pitches to take part in a ten team Touch Rugby League extravaganza.

The event was to mark the start of the 2010 – 2011 Women’s educational competition framework in the North West and has so far involved the North West League for all team delivering Touch Rugby League taster sessions to over 20 colleges and universities with the aim of increasing adult participation and growing the female game.

The Cronton Sixth Form Girls where unbeaten throughout the day beating university opposition, the team of girls played fantastically well, they topped the group with 3 wins and a draw, with tries from Amy Lord, Tara Stanley and Anna Smith in the group stages.

In the Semi finals they beat Liverpool University’s first team who have not been beat for 3 years, after 5 minutes of extra time with Tara Stanley breaking away from inside her own half to score, the games first and only try.

Then with a quick turn around straight into the final against a very good Wigan and Leigh college team. The final was a very close and tense affair, with Anna Smith scoring the only try, with some great handling skills going across the pitch and a great final pass from Amy Lord, Anna showed great footwork and speed to score in the corner.

The girls scored 9 tries in total and didn’t concede throughout the whole afternoon, this was due to some great defence out wide from Catherine Rose, Hannah Corkill and Sophie Gough. This is such a great achievement for the team, that have only been together for 2 training sessions and some girls have not played competitive Rugby League before. There was a great effort in the middle of the park in both attack and defence from Sarah Allison and Lisa Allen.

Ben Barton Head of Sporting Excellence at Cronton 6th Form College said; “This is a fantastic achievement for the girls and one which the college are very proud of. The Centre of Sporting Excellence at Cronton is focused on making sure that all of our individual and team athletes have the opportunity to stretch and develop themselves both within their academic and sporting areas. Yesterday’s competition certainly did this and they came out of it with flying colours.”

This is a huge achievement not just for the girls but for the college, Sports Tutor Mark Brennan said ‘ I was so proud of the team, the way they conducted themselves in poor playing conditions, the skill levels they showed throughout was fantastic, the girls really did show commitment, hard work and dedication to achieve this fantastic result’