Mansfield Women finish well to win a thrilling friendly against Sutton Bonnington

Sutton turned up with only 13 players , but in the spirit of the game, Mansfield lent their opponents some of their own players and what followed was all the better for it.

An open, free flowing game with pace, ambition and more than enough crunching tackles meant a reduced number of players never became an issue.

Mansfield came away with the win but at one point it was all tied up and anyone’s to pinch.

Head coach Dave Woodcock was happy with his side’s performance and said: ‘That was a very high tempo game, a good test for us to deal with a very quick set of players. We showed real promise today.”

Amy Marshall put the home team were 5-0 up and eventually Cat Chambers took the opportunity to add a second, the conversion again missed. But Sutton added their first try to the board just before half-time to make it 10-5 at the break.

Chambers then added her second try and Hannah Blake's conversion made it 17-5.

Again, not to be undone, the visitors replied in kind before Blake added a try to her tally and converted it after more brilliant interplay to take the Blue-and-Whites into a healthy 24-10 lead.

The next two tries came from Sutton Bonnington and, both converted, saw them tie up the game. With the game being so frenetic it was always going to result in some loose ball.

The visitors, both times, excellently regathered this ball and found a way through the defence to score long range tries

However, Mansfield were able to just pull ahead in the dying minutes as Leah Gretton took control of the ball close to the opponent’s line and proved too difficult to stop, breaking through numerous tackles to take Mansfield into the lead.

A successful conversion by Blake saw the game end with a home victory, 31-24.

Both teams should be immensely proud of their performances. For a friendly, played without full teams, this could have been a cautious, slow dogfight. Instead, we got expansive, flowing, powerful attack and some crunching defence.