{"id":452246,"date":"2026-02-01T20:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/452246\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T20:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T20:15:07","slug":"pwr-gloucester-hartpury-beat-loughborough-to-maintain-perfect-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/452246\/","title":{"rendered":"PWR: Gloucester-Hartpury beat Loughborough to maintain perfect start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Champions Gloucester-Hartpury continued their perfect start to the Premiership Women&#8217;s Rugby season with a 45-26 victory over Loughborough Lightning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With the season returning after a six-week winter break, Gloucester-Hartpury made it eight straight wins and have now beaten all of their rivals this season at the first time of asking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A Nel Metcalfe hat-trick helped put them 19-7 ahead at the break on Sunday and they extended their advantage in the second half with Kelsey Jones, Georgia Brock, England captain Zoe Stratford and Pip Hendy all crossing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The victory leaves them five points clear of nearest rivals Saracens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Elsewhere, Bristol Bears ended a five-game losing run with a dramatic 30-29 home win over Sale Sharks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sale led 22-10 at half-time but Bristol gradually cut the gap and a last-gasp penalty from Wales scrum-half Keira Bevan gave them the victory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fourth-placed Exeter Chiefs ran in six tries in a 36-0 win over bottom side Leicester Tigers, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/crle7d84424o\" class=\"ssrcss-ckhpdl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Harlequins are third after beating Trailfinders<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Champions Gloucester-Hartpury continued their perfect start to the Premiership Women&#8217;s Rugby season with a 45-26 victory over Loughborough&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-452246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}