Mansfield Ladies sunk by late try flurry in friendly defeat by Scunthorpe

Without a league fixture this weekend, and indeed with only one fixture in the last month, Mansfield welcomed Scunthorpe to Eakring Road for a friendly to help keep the skills sharp. Despite the best efforts of Storm Babet on Friday, the pitch was in excellent condition, if not a bit soft underfoot, and was the perfect canvas for an entertaining game of end-to-end rugby.

The greasy surface did lead to a number of dropped balls but that almost became a footnote as both teams played attacking rugby.

Racking up 74 points between them in these conditions was an impressive tally.

Head coach Dave Woodcock was overall pleased with the performance though knows there is still work to do.

“I think we were better than the scoreline suggests but I wanted to prioritise the performance overall and I think we certainly did that,” he said.

Despite the fact this was a friendly, both teams really wanted to stamp their impact on to the game. The weather also wanted to play its part, fickle as it is, and greased up the ball like a bar of soap.

It made handling difficult and did stop the game from being quite as flowing as both teams were trying to make it.

Mansfield will be unhappy with the number of dropped balls overall, sucking their forward pack into a repeated pattern of scrums, but can be happy with their ability to take advantage of quick tap penalties, linebreaks and counter attacking opportunities.

With such a high scoring game there wasn’t much time between each try. Some of them came from long distance breaks, some of them came from quick tap penalties and some of them came from pieces of individual brilliance.

Either way, it was a fun back and forth affair that possibly benefited from having four quarters rather than two halves, it being a friendly meaning there was more freedom with the way the game was split.

This meant that teams were able to gather themselves, have a rest and be somewhat refreshed for the next period.

The Mansfield tries all came from superb cohesion among the players.

Passes didn’t always hit the intended hands but, as always, the ambition was there and when they did stick it was clear that this is a group of players that want to be available in supporting lines whenever possible.

Forwards and back interplayed well and numerous turnover penalties were won by both teams. Kirsty Woodcock excelled in the pack, being part of a unit that were able to pilfer and scavenge on the floor, and Louise Marsden operated in the backline with width and pace, earning both of them the joint player of the match award.

Cat Chambers, Leah Gretton, Laina Corah and Ffion Roberts all added to the home team’s tally with Roberts taking a brace after some quick thinking around the quick tap penalty.

Corah added three conversions to take the Blue-and-Whites’ tally to 31.

The exchange of points was largely even throughout the game.

However, as fierce as their defence was and as well as they were able to scramble when needed, Scunthorpe had their own flair, especially from fullback, that saw them increase their tally in the final period that ultimately ended up being the difference between the two sides in what may be the highest scoring women’s fixture seen so far at Eakring Road.

Despite this being a friendly, and played in the appropriate spirit that a friendly should be played in, Mansfield will come away from this feeling like the gap could have been closer and will want to work on the unforced errors that crept in to their game.

Scunthorpe were hungry at all opportunities and are good value for their win, they had power and pace and were willing to exploit as much free space as they could.

To say this was only the second game this squad has played in a month, it was a solid performance.