Tallaght women edged out by Kilkenny

The Tallaght women’s team took on Kilkenny in their second last league game of the season going down 27- 10 in Leinster Division Four in Tymon Park. On a blustery bank holiday weekend Sunday, Tallaght were struggling for numbers due to a combination of injuries and unavailability.

Kilkenny dominated the early stages and scored two unconverted tries to take a 10-0 lead.

The hosts responded and were camped on the Kilkenny line but too often they just had one-out runners running straight into the Kilkenny defence and they were eventually held up.

Finally someone on the Tallaght side trusted their passing skills when flanker Orlaith Plunkett offloaded superbly to Kim Littlefield who had taken an excellent line.

Littlefield broke through for a try to make the half-time score 10-5 to Kilkenny. In the second half Kilkenny continued to pound Tallaght with their big ball carriers.

Tallaght were tackling far too high which allowed Kilkenny to make easy metres in contact and they scored three more tries and converted one of them to take a 27-5 lead.

Tallaght kept fighting and centre Chloe Conroy scored with the final score of the game to make it 27-10 at the final whistle.

Head coach Hayley Whyte was pleased with her side’s effort.

“We were missing a lot of players and had several others playing out of position, with only a few subs.

“But the girls left everything on the pitch and I couldn’t ask more in terms of effort.

“Kilkenny were a well-coached side and they made us work hard for our tries.

“But it was nice to finish on a positive note scoring the final try of the match.”