A GAME of two halves this, but more about that later.

Firstly, Canterbury ladies must be praised for travelling all the way up the A2 to play this ‘home’ fixture at Beckenham when their own snow covered ground was deemed unplayable.

Despite the score line saying otherwise, rugby really was the winner in a highly entertaining game with two very committed sides putting their bodies on the line.

So grateful were the Beckenham ladies to their opponents for saving them the long journey, that they showed their appreciation with some pretty loose tackling and gifted them four first half converted tries to add to a penalty, all contributing to 31 to 0 deficit at the break.

In all fairness to the home girls, Canterbury had some extremely useful runners who when given the opportunity, were able to exploit the space and ran in some fine scores from long range.

There were some positives for the hosts, Alex Doyle, Dave Mills and Becki Hopkins were dominating the tight, Kat Gubb and Lynne Dawber were aggressive in the contact area and Lucy Hooton as usual was putting in some fine tackles.

A few half time positional changes seemed to work wonders for Beckenham, who never left their opponents half again for the rest of the match.

Time and time again the home side attacked, Amy Hooton, cleaning up in the lineout and was all around the park in the loose.

This gave Ann Plews the opportunity to release Julia Killick who with a decent platform to work from was, getting backs Lucy Checksfield and Charlotte Poole into the game.

Canterbury were defending strongly and after fine work by Sabrina Hammandou, Plews and Killick combined to release Breda Neville who was stopped just short of the line with a fine cover tackle.

Beckenham were growing with confidence and debutant, Toni Lynch was now getting involved in the exchanges, replacement Sam Reynolds, returned from injury to join in the attacks but the home side still could not find a way through.

Gubb and Mills hit some aggressive lines and the excellent Plews was creating havoc around the fringes to launch attack after attack.

A fine charge by Hopkins brought hope of another score but a last gasp tackle on the supporting Checksfield prevented the score.

The excellent Canterbury defence held out until the end and the score remained at 31-0 in their favour when the final whistle blew.

Injured skipper Harriet bold was extremely proud of her team’s second half performance but acknowledged that their lacklustre start and the strong Canterbury defence meant that they had little to take away from this game.