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| Women's Rugby News: Tuks Ladies impress at the Dubai sevens |  Posted on Monday 07 December 2009 - 12:34:59 by technical | | Tuks Ladies performed admirably at the Annual Dubai sevens tournament in the International Invitation Women's section of the tournament. Tuks Ladies were the only team that competed as a true club side in the international Invitation section against a number of countries. A number of these teams were entered as invitation teams while retaining most of their World Cup squads. The USA entered an "upcoming team" to blood new players in preparation for the future.
The Tuks ladies teams were one of first to play on the main pitch in conditions they never played in before, with a huge crowd present at that stage. This had a clear effect as they started nervously and France scored the first try. After this the Tuks ladies struck back and equalised. In the end France won the match 17-12, but it was already clear from the crowd reaction that the Tuks Ladies were to be a crowd favourite right throughout the tournament.
In their second match the Tuks Ladies were much more relaxed and in a stadium filled to near capacity, the team from Tukkies beat the Bangkok Angels (Thailand) 33-0.
The next match was against the highly rated USA team and through determination and a huge defensive effort managed to beat the USA 14-12. The team from the USA dominated much of the play and were somewhat unlucky to be denied a win by the highly motivated Tuks team. This established the Tuks Ladies not only as a crowd favourite, but surprisingly as one of the tournament favourites.
In the last match of the day, the Tuks Ladies management made a number of changes to rest key players, specifically as a few of these players had some minor muscle strains and fatigue showed in those used in all the previous matches. Tuks Ladies lost to the Moscow Region (Russia) 12-0.
Despite this Tuks Ladies managed to finish second in their pool behind Russia, with Tuks Ladies, the USA and France all on the same points, with only the points difference from their matches separating the teams.
Day 2:
In their quarter final encounter against the Arabian Gulf, Tuks Ladies outplayed the Arabian Gulf team, but a few mistakes brought the Gulf team back into the match. The Gulf team had a number of speedy players and showed that mistakes could be costly.
In the semi-final, the girls from Tukkies were off their game and lost to the French team in their second match against the national side (26-5). This loss was seen as surprising by commentators. France went on to win the final against Wooden Spoon (19-0) an invitational side from the UK.
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