Kingswood Ladies, with the help of coaches Stan Bailey and Derek James have been working tirelessly for months on end to build and prepare a team for the 'Spring Chick' Touch Tournament held at Chippenham RFC.

The team have gone from strength to strength since the early days and the commitment from the members has been fantastic allowing them to become a respected foundation of the club. Even the ladies have been surprised at how quickly the team has taken off and the level of interest from new players rises each week - last Tuesday the ladies attendance outnumbered the men's session by four to one!

With the numbers limited to just 12 in a team and only 6 to be played at a time, Kingswood now have the option to enter a second team into the South West Touch Tournaments and after their performance at the weekend there is no doubt that this will be a likely route going forward.

Arriving on Saturday surrounded by long standing, well established and rather professional looking teams it would be a lie to say that the whole team were not petrified, with the main question in everybody's minds... "are we ready for this??"
By this point there really was no turning back, with Kingswood Ladies being the first game of the day and a lengthy battle with a gazebo, before we knew it the horn had sounded and we were up.

Stan, having his own issues trying to arrange a team for the men's game against Cheltenham seemed to have forgotten quite what he was doing in Chippenham and looked fairly shocked when he saw twelve eager faces waiting to hear the first team selection, and after he'd remembered how to count having originally sent only five players onto the pitch we were ready. Ready to play the first ever tournament as a team.

Knowing that we were the underdogs and being extremely new to the rules, the main objective of the day was to enjoy the experience and this was aided by the officials being fully aware that it was a first for Kingswood and helping in any way they could.
A little green behind the ears and naive to the oppositions tricks the first game was tough but this did nothing to dampen the teams spirits and they ploughed on throughout the morning playing a further three games and improving with each performance, reducing the points difference in every round.

After a short break to watch the England Ladies, Kingswood were entered into the plate and took everything they had learnt from the morning and put it into practise. The game was by far the best performance of their tournament and some excellent play saw them lose out by a measly two tries, a huge difference from the score line earlier on in the day.

Unfortunately the team walked away from the tournament without any silverware however they did walk away with a wealth of new knowledge and experience which now puts them in great stead for future competitions and the only way is up. Each and every player that attended should be extremely proud of themselves for the effort and dedication shown and if they can compete at that level for the first time ever as a team, it will not be long before Kingswood Ladies are competing to win.

Massive thanks go to Stan, Del and Geoff for the support along with the rest of our loyal spectators, we couldn't of done it without you all!

Well done everybody, GO TEAM!