West of Scotland are looking forward to hosting Cartha Queens Park on Friday evening as a busy weekend of Sarah Beaney Cup pool matches gets underway.

The home side go into the Pool 2 clash off the back of a 38-0 defeat to Oban Lorne last week while Cartha defeated the same opponents 26-7 in the first round of fixtures.

As a result, Cartha will start as the favourites, but West cannot wait to get a run out at Burnbrae under lights.

One of the West coaches Nicole Eadie explained:“The team first came together as a university side in 2013, but as players started to graduate we were keen to join a club to keep progressing.

“West of Scotland approached the team and offered to support the growth of the club side as they they had previously had a women’s section, but that had fallen away.

“The team moved to train at West and in 2015 and our first competitive season was the 2018 transitional league when we played some good rugby and used 37 players.

“The team are really looking forward to Friday.

“We’ve looked at the basic errors that we were making on Sunday against Oban and training this week has been pretty positive.

“We aren’t naïve though, we are more than aware that Friday will be a massive step-up, but the team are ready and want to play some positive rugby.”

There are 10 more matches on Sunday with Livingston taking on Corstorphine in Pool 5 set to be a highlight.

Lee Anne Steel, the Livingston overall club president who also plays for the team at scrum-half, said:“I originally set up the girls structure at the club and wanted their rugby to continue here as they got older, so we held a ‘come and try’ event a couple of years ago and it took off from there.

“We know it doesn’t get much harder than this – it’s our second competitive games against one of the top sides in the country.

“However, we just want to play rugby and enjoy it so we’re going to give it our all. We are learning and this will be a massive learning curve for us.”

In Pool 2 Wigtownshire host Ayr, reigning champions Hillhead/Jordanhill are on the road to Hamilton in Pool 3 and Stirling County – fresh from a win over Orkney Dragons – are due to be at Aberdeenshire.

Watsonians opened with a 108-0 win over Kirkcaldy a fortnight ago and are at Liberton, Heriot’s are away to RDVC and Howe Harlequins are on the road to Inverness Craig Dunain.

In Pool 10 Glasgow University take on Ardrossan Accies with Annan meeting Greenock Wanderers while Pool 11’s latest action sees Huntly and Peterhead meet.

This weekend’s fixtures

Pool 1