"Mum I'm On TV!!"- Rugby Tonight TV Apperance
As seen in The Spark Newspaper, Our university's student run newspaper
The Ladies From Reading's Rugby Union Strut Their Stuff On The Silver Screen
Everyone has once in a while dreamt about stepping on to the small screen and on the 2nd May saw our very own ladies from the rugby union team given the exciting opportunity to appear on BT Sport's show 'Rugby Tonight'.
The girls ventured to Stratford where the show was hosted before a live audience which included the girls’ coaches Russell Bolton and Ben Wills who watched on as the rest of the action unfolded. The team helped demonstrate a masterclass session with the help of London Wasp's fly half Jimmy Gopperth alongside presenter Austin Healey who led the session in order to explain his tactics in the match in dealing against defensive pressure or rush defence.
Gopperth explained that when your on the pitch that you need to act quickly as you only have a short decision making time .
“The defence are coming so hard off the lines so its cutting your time and space down and want to give you the allusion that there is no space and just keep coming at you”.
Gopperth and Healy then went on to show the audience along with our lovely Reading ladies several ways to avoid this which teams could start implementing into their matches . This involved the girls acting as the opposition attempting to close off any gaps for the opposing team. One option was to beat the opposition to the gaps but meant you as a player would be relying on the next phase and the opposition to retreat or make mistakes.
The second which Gopperth used in his match on Sunday was to go back against the lazy defenders by going around the scrum creating a three on two attack against the defence.
The final option was adding another player in as the first receiver from the scrum half instead of the in order to create another option and cut down thinking time for the fly half who normally would be the first receiver.
As well as being part of the demo the girls got the chance to be interviewed alongside Moseley Women RFC who also appeared in the show . It helped to promote the club as well as the university and hopefully encourage new players for next season .
The program was as our new captain Sarah Northover stated “a great opportunity to see how everything worked behind the scenes , its all got to be well choreographed for a live show”
Despite this, we did get to have fun on set by taking photographs alongside the presenters as well as the crew who help to make the show run smoothly. The team were also interviewed on our results of the season by Martin Bayfield who asked us about how the season went and our fantastic tour to Dublin which our former captain Sammy Cooper represented by giving him a chip bag costume which our flanker Nicole Maynard volunteered to wear for the whole of the trip. It was a big hit with the presenters who tweeted the girls many pictures we had taken throughout the show.
Who knows what next year will bring for these ladies who will sadly be saying farewell to some wonderful players at the end of the year and wish them all the best in the future as well as welcoming new players to the squad in September .
