Six Women’s All Ireland sides competed in the inaugural Women’s Club Sevens competition yesterday afternoon at Terenure College RFC. 

The six teams were split onto two pools as follows. 

Pool A	Pool B
Blackrock College	Cooke
Galwegians	UL Bohs
Railway Union	Old Belvedere

I’d made the two and a half  hour trip down to cover these games more in hope than expectation but I must admit it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. Granted, some of the sides were a bit light on their “big name” players but I’d say all the teams would have gotten something out of the experience. 

I’ve to head out this afternoon to cover some more games so we’ll do this in two parts. 

Galleries from the first four games are shown below and we’ll get the rest up in Part 2, tomorrow (Monday) morning. 

Just click on the tab below to view a brief report and the full match gallery for each game. 

[toggle title=”Game 1: Railway Union 41 Blackrock College 0 (Pool A)” load=”hide”]

Railway Union controlled this game from start to finish scoring three tries in the first half and another four in the second.

Blackrock worked hard throughout, and created a couple of chances, but ultimately, they were unable to break down the energetic Railway defence.

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[toggle title=”Game 2: Old Belvedere 24 Cooke (Pool B) 0″ load=”hide”]

It was a fairly inexperienced Cooke team but they were bolstered by the hard working Kelly McCormill and Dolores Hughes, the latter just back from a years rugby in Australia.

Old Belvedere, coached by Sene Naoupu, eventually wore down a resistant Cooke side to score two tries in each half.

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[toggle title=”Game 3: Railway Union 26 Galwegians 14 (Pool A)” load=”hide”]

Two Irish halfbacks went head to head on the coaching front of this one as Nikki Caughey‘s Railway side edged out Mary Healy‘s Galwegians’.

Railway took a 12 – 7 lead into the break after a competitive and abrasive first half.

Galwegians edged into a 14 – 12 lead with a try early in the second but th Dublin outfit eventually wore down their opponents with two late tries sealing the game.

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[toggle title=”Game 4: UL Bohemian 12 Old Belvedere 27 (Pool B)” load=”hide”]

UL Bohemian started up their challenge in some style playing some lovely sevens rugby inspired by their coach, ball playing prop, Fiona Hayes.

TeamFRU player Enya Breen opened the scoring for Boh’s but Belvo got their act together to respond with two of their own in the first half.

The teams swapped tries at the start of the second period to take it to 12 – 17 in Belvo’s favour and the Dublin side pulled away with two late tries to seal the game.

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The results left Railway Union and Old Belvedere top of their respective pools having won two from two in their pool games. 

This left the following matches to decide who would join them in the semi finals. 

Match 5: Blackrock v Galwegians (Pool A)

Match 6: Cooke v UL Bohemian (Pool B) 

These galleries will be up in the morning.