Thompson grabs hat-trick for Miners Ladies
Leigh Miners Ladies 40 Rochdale Hornets 16
The ladies started there home campaign with a hard fought victory against the newly established Rochdale team, in a game which saw 16 year old Rachel Stott make her debut.
Rochdale opened the scoring when their prop forward squeezed over the line from close range, the conversion was added to give the visitors a 6-0 lead. The Miners responded well with Clare Thompson finding a gap in the line to go over for a try.
Rochdale collected the ball from their own kick-off and were pressing for the next try, with three consecutive sets on the Miners line, Leigh’s defence stood firm and when the ball went to ground, Clare Thompson swooped on the ball and ran the full length of the pitch, touching down under the posts. Emily Mullen added the conversion to put the ladies 10-6 in front. With half time approaching tries in quick succession from Rachel Thompson and Keli Morris gave the miners a 20 points to 6 lead at the break.
The Miners were caught napping at the start of the second half, when Rochdale once again collected the ball from their own kick-off, scoring from the resulting set of six.
Miners restored their advantage with Rachel Thompson benefiting from strong attacking play on the right edge to score two tries in quick succession.
Emily Mullen scored next, picking the ball up from acting half back, sidestepping a defender and going half the length of the pitch to score under the post, Emily added the conversion to take the score to 34-10.
Rochdale who refused to give up score a converted try before hard working prop Carly Crowther crashed over the line in the final play of the game, Mullen converted once again to give a final score of 40 -16. Rachel Thompson was awarded player of the match for her hat-trick of tries.
