The Penn State Women finished their tour with a hard fought loss against Marcoussis/Orleans 26-19. As has been the case for all of the games the opposition had some French international players that made the game tough for the Penn State team.
On Friday the team had a morning work-out before getting some time to explore Lille, and Belgium for those that were interested. As is always the case on tour, we found out a rugby field at the HQ of Decathalon, a french sports store. The players went their own way, but the rain and cold made it a difficult day to site-see. However a few groups jumped on a train and went over to Belgium. The staff took a rid to Ypres. This is a famous world war 1 town with the famous Menin Gate where the last post is played every day.
On Saturday the team traveled south to Marcoussis, just south of Paris. This is where the French Rugby Union has their center of excellence. The team got a tour of the center including their pitches, sports science areas and even the motorized scrum machine – where they can mimic the opposition scrum for the french team.
After the tour the team took on a combined team of Marcoussis and Orleans. John Flude has contacts with the Orleans team and Fabrice Lesage, who arranged the tour and the game. The team played very well and had a chance to win Penn State’s first game ever in France. However the week of training and travel made for some heavy legs at the end of the game and Penn State was not able to get the final scores to pull it off.
After the game the team watch the France vs Ireland match and then the French U20 men’s team turned up to watch the game as well. The players got a chance to meet some of the future stars of the French team and even got to scrum and do some line-out lifts with them.
The team returned home with many lessons learned. We played against some of the best teams in France and we played against many future, current and past French internationals. The pace of the game was something we will not see in the US, so now we need to keep that speed and bring it to our games in the spring.
