‘Ritch’ pickings for the falcons

(CTA): Episode 1 of Season Two of Cayman’s own sporting docu-soap drama, Millennium Falcon Cayman Women’s Touch League, opened with a bang as four new teams pitted it out for the title. New plot lines and new characters will no doubt come forth over the course of this event but this time around we are transported to outer space where we have the Millennium Falcons, the Ebon Hawks, Raven’s Claw and the Eagle Transporters vying for intergalactic supremacy. The names have been chosen on a Star Wars theme and the standard of play was certainly out of this world … some might say from a galaxy far far away.

Kindly sponsored by local firm Millennium Entertainment and our good friends at Miller Lite, Women’s Touch League is becoming more popular than a final episode of The Bachelorette. Each team has been selected by a highly detailed algorithmic database to ensure that they would be evenly matched. And so it proved, with the winning margin being by only one try in three out of the four games, the other being a draw!

The Millennium Falcons, who allegedly voted against the shortened acronym of “the MIL-Fs”, have started the season at Light Speed with two wins out of two. In their first game against Ebon Hawks it was Evelin Ritch who nabbed two tries to down the Hawks by 2-1. One of Ritch’s tries involved some excellent foot work side-stepping the defender and then racing to the line. Captain Marida Montgomery was very happy with her team’s performance especially as it is the first time many of these girls have played together. She highlighted the performance of Julia Spurdle and Loletta Hanna in defense as invaluable to the team’s strong performance.

For the Ebon Hawks, notable performances came from Karlie Cross, who scored their only try, and Elena Testori. Both are extremely fast and will be players to watch next time round. Testori is completely new to the game and picked up the subtleties quickly, as did other newbie Roisin Liddy-Murphy. Quincy Clark led the team well, and Lluvia Hirsch and Jacky Rowland were outstanding with their tactical awareness and positioning play helping guide those around them.

On the second pitch, Eagle Transporter soared to a 2-1 victory over Raven’s Claw. Tries from Alison Linley and Sharlee Henshaw were enough to clip the Ravens’ wings, with Jo Remillard scoring their try to make the result in doubt right up to the final whistle.

The two victors from Round 1 met each other in Round 2 and fought out an evenly matched 2-2 draw. Try-machine Emma Santiago opened her account with Loletta Hanna getting the second. Rhian Minty pulled one back for the Eagles and Sharlee Henshaw made it two tries in two games to make the scores tied. Henshaw has the uncanny knack of being at the right place at the right time when it comes to scoring – an invaluable asset for any team. At this level, a high conversion rate of chances to tries is essential, especially when games are inherently tight.

Ebon Hawks beat Ravens Claw 1-0 with a fine Karlie Cross try. That’s two defeats in two for the Ravens but Captain Caroline Deegan was not downhearted. Jodie Hooper had a couple of stand-out matches picking the game up very quickly in her first start and demonstrated some really tenacious defense and showed some serious ball handling skills. Sheleese Green also played well and nearly had two tries herself, one that was finished with a wonderful dive only to be thwarted by a vital late touch before gettingthe ball down.  The game of Touch can be a game of inches and on such small margin fortunes can be won or lost.