Wednesday night saw Hartpury University rugby claim their third win of the season in the BUCS Women’s National League. Hannah Kibble was ‘100% proud of the team’ who had a mixture of first team regulars and Gloucester-Hartpury players in their XV.
A comfortable 44-12 win for Hartpury was a great opportunity “to gel in with the girls who’ve been working hard at BUCS consistently. It was nice to get on the pitch and I felt we bonded well as a team celebrating the small wins like good tackles and runs”
Kibble, who plays as a back row spoke of her introduction to rugby and the challenges of being a woman in a male dominated sport:
“I got into rugby through my local club: Cinderford RFC. I watched when I was younger on a Saturday with my dad watching the first team and being around that environment for so long, I just thought I’d give rugby a try. I started when I was about 10, played for two years with some boys that I went to school with, and it carried on from there.
“A couple of teams we would play on a Sunday weren’t the nicest towards me going “ooh they’ve got a girl on their team you can run at her because she won’t tackle you” and stuff like that when in real fact I was probably one of the best tacklers and best ball carriers in the team for them to have that perception of me was quite hard. Even now there’s a perception of women’s rugby that it’s not as physical as the men.”
Now, she’s a member of the Gloucester-Hartpury squad, has a BUCS Women’s National League title and BUCS Championship under her belt after a successful first year at Hartpury University. Next week has an Under 20’s England trial. It does bring it’s added pressures though:
“Last year we won nearly every game, won the league and the champ and the year before we won the champ so getting that much success in such a short space of time is hard for a group of girls being the ones that everyone wants to beat. Every week everyone wants to beat Hartpury. We are the team in the league that everyone wants to bring their A game because everyone knows how competitive we are.”
When she’s not scoring tries in the BUCS final, Kibble studies Sports Therapy at Hartpury, “I’m in on Mondays from seven in the morning, I train then go to the gym then from half ten till six I’m in for a full day of lectures.” In that final, Kibble, unbeknownst to her, broke her wrist scoring her first try but carried on for the remainder of the match scoring another try! The final was a special moment for her:
“I don’t score many tries I do a lot of the work for everyone, so it was nice to get that and nice to get a second to show my hard work.”
She has high hopes for both her rugby career and her university degree:
“I’d love to play for the red roses, get my England cap, outside of rugby I just want to make sure I get a 2-1 in my degree to get the building blocks for my career.”
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Next up for Kibble and Hartpury University is a clash with strugglers Durham with a chance to go top. “Last year they were in a similar situation and brought a good fight and we can’t take anything for granted. They could come at us, and we could not be in the right headspace that day but hopefully we’ll get the points we need (to go top of the league).”
