Western Force will host reigning champions NSW Waratahs in their Swyftx Super Rugby Women’s semi-final after a gritty 36-20 bonus point win over the Brumbies on Sunday.\n<\/p>\n
They won the right for the home game, to be played on Saturday July 18, after beating the Reds, Waratahs and the Brumbies.\n<\/p>\n
They finished second with 13 points, just one behind Fijian Drua after the Reds shocked the NSW side 26-19 to keep the Force three points ahead of the Waratahs.\n<\/p>\n
Force coach Dylan Parsons was on the bus with his squad heading to Canberra airport when they heard about the Reds win.\n<\/p>\n
“All the girls got pretty excited by it and got around it,” Parsons said.\n<\/p>\n
“It’s a good feeling to be able to earn the home semi and do it against a team that we’ve already done it against.\n<\/p>\n
“It puts us in a good spot to go after them. Good stuff.\n<\/p>\n
“We’ll have a lighter training this week before getting into a big week going into the semi.”\n<\/p>\n
Parsons said there was a growing confidence in the side that had created its own history in the past two games.\n<\/p>\n
They ended a run of 37 wins by the Waratahs against Australian sides and then ticked off a third consecutive victory for the first time with the battling win in Canberra.\n<\/p>\n
They scored four first-half tries from prop Hera-Barb Malcolm Heke, winger Adi Vani Buleki, scrum-half Sammy Wood and reserve back Atawhai Hotene to take a 24-12 lead into the break.\n<\/p>\n
Force reserve forwards Yuna Sato and Taylor Waterson scored two more five-pointers in the second period, Waterson’s coming after the siren. Wood converted three.\n<\/p>\n
The Force beat the Reds 21-17 with a try in the dying seconds and fought back from 21-7 down at the break against the Waratahs to win by seven points.\n<\/p>\n
“We’ve made it a bit hard for ourselves but playing under pressure is what finals rugby is about,” Parsons said.\n<\/p>\n
“These type of experiences set us up better for the finals.\n<\/p>\n
“We knew games against the Brumbies are always gritty but we were able to stick to our game plan, we trusted it even if we left it late again.\n<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t pretty but that was a big win for us.\n<\/p>\n
“The belief was there, it showed where we’re at and can win dirty.\n<\/p>\n
“To bounce back from the emotion of the win last week, cope with injuries and positional changes, shows the character of the group.\n<\/p>\n
“We been thrown a few curve balls here and there but we’ve been able to adapt and trust what we are doing.\n<\/p>\n
“That’s all you can ask from the group.”\n<\/p>\n
The Force played 30 minutes with 14 players after a first half 20-minute red card to centre Celia Smith for a high tackle that left her with a nasty head gash and a second half yellow to prop Alapeta Nguamo for a similar offence.\n<\/p>\n
“We had to work really hard for each other,” Parsons said.\n<\/p>\n
“We’ve had a big emphasis on our defence the last few weeks.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
“We wanted to make the point that if we are going to win this competition it’s going to be defence that does it for us.\n<\/p>\n
“We value our defence. We’ve put ourselves in good spots on the back of our defence.\n<\/p>\n
“We’ve got some gamebreakers and we set up our attack to give them opportunities, and we’ve got some really smart game drivers.\n<\/p>\n
“A lot of good decision making and combinations are working and starting to click, turning moments into points.”\n<\/p>\n
Parsons was full of praise for\u00a0assistant coach Chris Heiberg and the forwards that dominated a powerful Brumbies scrum.<\/p>\n
“Chris has done a brilliant job with the pack particularly around scrum time,” he said.\n<\/p>\n
“What’s more impressive is there are some pretty new, inexperienced props learning their craft but because of the work he has done, it doesn’t look like it.\n<\/p>\n
“Each week the scrum keeps showing up and setting the platform. Teams are starting to see that as big test.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Western Force will host reigning champions NSW Waratahs in their Swyftx Super Rugby Women’s semi-final after a gritty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,11229],"class_list":["post-780504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-western-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780504","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=780504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}