Wasps Ladies beat Richmond Women 36-5 at the Richmond Athletic Ground on Sunday afternoon, as Wasps scored six tries to repel a more dominant second-half performance from a young Richmond side in the West London Derby.
Richmond started brightly but soon conceded territory to an energetic Wasps side. Their early dominance paid fruition as Abby Dow got the first try of the game on 15 minutes for Wasps, spreading the ball wide and scoring in the corner. It was all Wasps from there and they made it count with two more tries before the break. First, Harriet Millar-Mills, on her return from a long knee injury, took the ball from a scrum and drove to the line for a second try in the 26th minute, with Lizzie Goulden making no mistake with the conversion on the second time of asking. Five minutes before the break, Abby Dow was back in the mix with her second try of the game and Wasps took a healthy 17-nil lead into the break.
The second half started where the first left off, with Wasps’ Sofia Rolfi darting through the Richmond defence and scoring her first try for the first IV just 2 minutes after the restart. Goulden converted and Wasps looked to be cruising. Richmond fought back with spirit, however, and pressed and pressed for their first try, camping out on the 5m line. They threw on replacements but just couldn’t get over the line. Wasps then showed their clinical edge by stealing the ball, with replacement Lucy Nye scoring a brilliant runaway try. But with Wasps down a player for a yellow card five minutes later, Richmond finally got the try they had been pressing for in the 74th minute with club favourite Laura Kapo getting over the line. It roused the crowd but didn't last long as Wasps immediately responded with Claudia MacDonald breaking away to score their sixth and final try of the game, ending the match 05-36 to Wasps.
Another disappointing result for Richmond leaves them 6 games without a win. Player of the match, Grace Moore, conceded they need to do more once they give away the ball. “There’s a lot of things we can take away from this game. We’ve proved that we can work together and we can fight for each other, we just have to do that for 80 minutes of the game,” she said. “It’s about coming out switched on from minute one. A lot of players came off the bench and made a difference for us. We have to come back fighting.” Head Coach Mike Panoho echoed those sentiments saying “We’re disappointed in the result. We’ve got to make sure we look after the ball. The big thing for us is not to be afraid, but we care about what happens on the pitch and it’s important we get results.”
Wasps face Gloucester-Hartpury at home next week while Richmond go into a daunting fixture against Saracens for the last game of the year and Panoho says his young players must embrace the challenge. “For us, we’ve got to stick to our guns, especially what we did in that last 40 - not to give away too many points in the first half and give us a chance to chase the game. We need to go back to basics though because the tackle let us down today, so that’s something we’ve got to address this week in training. The girls were upbeat, they’re going to be hurting tonight, but they’ll bounce back.”
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