The NSRV Women's Select 15s Team competed in the Le Mole International
Tournament in Bonneville, France, on the weekend of June 30 - July 1st. This
appearance marked the beginning of the side's newest 15s development cycle,
aimed towards a future more frequent insertion of the Swiss women's 15-a-side
game in the framework of select side and national team programs, under new
NSRV Women's Head Coach Steven Mottee..
Right from the start it was clear that the newly assembled Swiss selection, led by
veteran Captain Petra Tretter, would have some growing pains to overcome
during the course of its first tournament in its current formation. In its opening
match, the NSRV team faced the English Premiership club Bath. In a surprisingly
even-handed game, the Swiss ladies made a respectable debut to their
tournament, even though they suffered a little from the communication
deficiencies which are to be expected form a side which had never played
together previously. The NSRV team suffered even more, however, from a series
of only partially unfounded penalties, and ended the game lagging two tries to nill
behind the English, with a score of 12:0.
In its second match, the NSRV team faced the eventual tournament winner and
French League Champion Montpellier, a highly experienced French club team of
literally epic proportions. The tough NSRV scrum around its strong hooker Emily
Hart held its own against a French scrum which outweighed it easily by 150kg.
The forwards thereby gave their team a chance to keep the game much more
balanced than it should have been, allowing the Swiss ladies to build up a few
good attacking opportunities with some brave inside running by both forwards
and backs. Keeping the game close to the trenches turned out to be a promising
strategy in this match-up, and the Swiss backs' hard pressure on defense and
courageous tackling in the line kept the game within reach, ending in a
Montpellier win by only 3 tries to none (final score: 19:0).
In the Swiss' third and final match of Saturday, the NSRV selection faced a fellow
select side. Like the NSRV is selected from the top players in the Swiss league,
the "Selection Ile De France" was a selection of the top players from the 8 best
clubs in the Paris Region. Not entirely an even match-up, as you can guess. A
tired NSRV scrum had some difficulties competing with the solid French select
side pack, and as a result the Swiss team had difficulties in every phase getting a
clean ball. This lack of possession, kept the Swiss ladies from generating more
than a handful of offensive opportunities, which the NSRV backline did try to
make the most of, Fly-half Petra Tretter and center Caro Reischauer combining
for a spectacular switch play, which in turn resulted in an even more spectacular
dump tackle by the large and tall Parisian number 8. Nevertheless, the Swiss
courageous defense and gutsy tackling kept the French somewhat at bay, and the
game ended with a score of 3 tries to nill.
On Sunday morning, a bruised, injury-battered, and decimated NSRV team was
down to 2 substitutes, and would have had only 1 had it not been for the CERN
Wing Metta joining the team the same morning. However, the team rallied for its
last game of the tournament, against Cooke RFC from Ireland. The Swiss team
came out strong dominating the game right from the kick-off. Second-rower
Nadia Burri's strong lineout jumping, and the entire forward pack's commitment
to the set pieces and the breakdowns gave the Swiss side a lot more quality ball
possession than the day before. Mixing crashing forwards runs off the rucks with
well-executed backline plays and consistent support, gave the NSRV team much
more offensive power than the day before. The strong-running centres Caro
Reischauer and Carol Casparis, combined well with the quick back three to create
a lot of exciting offense. Because of some bad luck and perhaps some overly
conservative attacking choices, the Swiss ladies did not manage to slot the try
they would have deserved after dominating in almost every phase of play. The
game thus ended in a 0:0 draw, landing the NSRV team in 5th place at the 2007
Le Mole 15s Tournament.