Cheltenham 5 Albion 8

Albion Ladies travel to Cheltenham on the back of the win against Trojans last week and fight hard to come away with the win in a close match under difficult conditions. As Tristan Forster said "a win's a win".

The weather conditions were bad with the rain coming down and the strong wind blowing diagonally across the pitch making any kicking difficult.

Albion started well but Cheltenham were playing some really good flowing rugby despite the conditions off loading at the tackle well. They broke through the centres in the 10th minutes to score an unconverted try. Shortly after Cheltenham again crossed the line but the ref judged the ball to have been held up, lucky for Albion as they would then have been down by 10 points.

On the half hour Cheltenham were penalised for not rolling away 25 metres out just left of the posts and Tracy Corby took the opportunity to reduce the deficit to just 2 points.

At the break Albion felt that had more to show and after a change on 50 minutes Suzie Kendall moved into the centre and created a try when she made a 40 metre break through the Cheltenham centres before being pulled down just short of the line. Albion kept position and recycled the ball passing out to Sonia Clatworthy who scored in the corner.

Albion continued to play the ball wide and Verity Waters made it across the line in the corner, with the referee slightly unsighted he looked to the touch who indicated his judgement as a try but much to the surprise of the Albion players 2 22 dropout was awarded.

Tamsin Gribble came on for her first appearance for a couple of years for the last 10 minutes of the match and Albion held out the Cheltenham attack to take the win but without claiming a bonus point for only a the third time this season.

 With Bath and Richmond not playing this weekend Albion move to second in the table.

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