By Jack Cook
UNIVERSITY of South Wales Women’s 1st travel to Oxford Brookes in the first round of the cup.
USW come in to this game off the back of an impressive second-half performance against Bath last week, which saw them claim a 22-12 win.
USW have won three of their five games this season, with victories coming over Bath, Bournemouth and Gloucestershire.
Their two defeats so far have come against local rivals Cardiff Metropolitan, and Southampton.
Oxford Brookes come into this game winless, having lost all five of their games this season. They have been on the end of four heavy defeats. Their points difference in the last five games is -230.
USW head coach Mark Hutton wants his side to make a fast start on Wednesday.
“We are very keen to hit the ground running and start with a bang from the first whistle, we have been poor in this area and it’s taken us a while to get going and to fall into our structures.
“Like we have shown previously, the team’s ability is to score tries late on in games, and we have demonstrated this in the last two weeks, with scores in the last 10 minutes.
“You have one shot at cup games, and you’ve got to throw everything at it, there are no second chances and that is at the back of everyone’s minds going into these games.”
Captain Keely Ward has pinpointed the team’s togetherness as something which can help see them through.
“Our preparations in training have been very high intensity, as that’s the attitude we need to be implanting into the games.
“The main positive is the team morale we have created. We are all bonding on and off the pitch and it’s starting to show throughout the game, we are immensely happy with the girls’ commitment.
“Of course, it’s a much bigger game as you only have one shot each round, but we don’t want to add any pressure so we’re just going to go into the game as we would every other week and hope it’s our day.”
Kick-off is at 14:00.
