“Unofficial” Germany passes its first test
A possible landmark game in German women’s rugby took place last weekend when an unofficial German XV took on the Swiss national team in Heidelberg, winning 47-13 in Heidelberg.
Published by John Birch, September 1st, 2015
6 minute read
Approaching a fifth of all German adult rugby players are women but, whereas the DRV (the German rugby union) continues to organise, fund and support national men’s XVs and VIIs teams, Germany’s women have not played any official test rugby since 2010, when the DRV took the decision to only fund and support the women's international sevens team.
A series of defeats at test level may not have helped the cause of the test team – they had not won a test since 2008, and had been on the receiving end of some sizable defeats to the Netherlands (83-0) and Spain (74-0) – but most club rugby in Germany is XVs, and the format remains very popular.
An unofficial team was put together to play Belgium home and away in 2012 and 2013 resulting in a win and a defeat, but despite this and demand from players the DRV’s policy has remain unchanged.
As a result, at the end of July, a new initiative was announced – G15 – a privately organised and funded “national” team which will aim to fill the gap left by the DRV and play unofficial test matches. Within weeks of its being formed a game against Switzerland was announced, which took place last weekend.
The Swiss are preparing for the European Trophy, which they will host in the Autumn. They finished fourth in last year’s Trophy, but pushed Russia all the way in the third-place game, and have also beaten Belgium, Finland and the Czech Republic in recent years. Currently they are ranked 11th in Europe.
Both teams were as near full strength as could be hoped for an unofficial test/training fixture organised in August at such short notice. G15 certainly approached the game as if it were a test, with two intense days with training course before Sunday’s game. A 33-player final squad had been selected from an initial longlist of 60, with players coming from Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Frankfurt and Heidelberg, by the coaching team Alfred Jansen, Marcus Trick and Peter Schatz.
The game took place in 38 degrees of blazing heat, and in front of a crowd over over 250. G15 were a little nervous and hectic at the start, allowing Switzerland to open the scoring with a penalty kick by Carole Casparis. But G15, under captain Jana Eisenbeiß, began to settle and by the the middle of the first half had taken the lead thanks to two penalties from Dana Kleine-Grefe.
The kicking of G15 team was proving especially effective, allowing them to take a firm grip on the game. In the 32th minute second-row Simone Otto scored the first try, with Kleine-Grefe converting. However the Swiss struck back with a breakaway try from Selina Fux resulting in a halftime score of 13-10.
The second half then belonged entirely to the G15. The pack took command: Safe ball, strong rucking and dominance of open play resulted in further tries from prop Sabine Schubert (45th) and No 8 Svetlana Hess (52 and 69). The back line also found themselves with more room and centres Steffi Gruber (58th) and Lisa Bohrmann (72) added more tries before flanker Monica Yee rounded off the scoring in stoppage time.
Switzerland added only one penalty kick in the half, by Carole Casparis, resulting in a final score of 47-13.
German rugby website Total Rugby (for which we thank for much the above) concluded their coverage of the game by saying that “perhaps we may now indeed hope that the DRV will in future revive the 15s team, and that their managers have followed the performance of this privately organized team on the ticker on totalrugby.de. Because this game between Switzerland and G15 was the very best advertisement for German women's rugby.”
Coming on the back of the huge disappointment (and negative comments) that followed the relegation of their VIIs team from the European Grand Prix earlier in the year it is a significant statement to make. If this performance was in any way representative of the strength of German women’s XVs it would clearly put Germany into the top 10 of European XVs, with a very realistic chance of making the top 8.
To put it another way, that would be a far higher ranking than the German women’s VIIs team have achieved in recent years. It also suggests that a well-supported official German XV would be within touching distance of a place at a future World Cup – especially if the tournament were ever expanded to 16 teams. If the DRV is aiming at international success, on this evidence, XVs would seem to be the way to go.
G15: 1 Lisa Maral (50. Jenny Reingruber) 2 Marlene Lorenz (60. Julia Wich-Schwarz) 3 Sabine Schubert (50. Marlis Gerigk) 4 Simone Otto (57. Mona Bieringer) 5 Julia Rettig 6 Melissa Paul (55. Monica Yee) 7 Julia Peters 8 Svetlana Heß 9 Franziska Holpp 10 Dana Kleine-Grefe (51. Leonie Hollstein) 11 Sylvia Kling (54. Salome Trauth) 12 Lisa Bohrmann 13 Steffi Gruber (60. Ninja Duri) 14 Laryssa Stone 15 Jana Eisenbeiß (c).
Replacements: Anne-Julie Bachmann, Denise Blume, Uli Borchardt, Johanna Carter, Anja Czaika, Tilla Dier, Stephanie Harringer, Susanne Pfisterer, Corinna Völker und Katrin Vocke.
Team manager: Bianka Häusler; Coach: Alfred Jansen, Peter Schatz and Marcus Trick; Physio: Gregor Rosch
Switzerland: Click here for squad details.
