BT Women’s Bowl: maiden season quest for Quins

Howe Harlequins’ journey to the Women’s BT Bowl final against Glasgow University at BT Murrayfield on Saturday 16 April has been short and sweet but a lot of hard work.Established in summer 2014, they spent a year in the National Development Leagues before stepping up this season to compete in BT Women’s National League 2, where they are third in the table with two games remaining.Howe captain Clare Fox said: “It’s been a massive journey in the space of a year with a lot of our players new to rugby. It took us the first few matches to find our feet, gel as a team and develop our rugby brains.”The team has developed massively and our increasing experience has brought the wins.”Howe Harlequins sailed to the final with a 42-5 win over Annan after defeating Oban Lorne Women 13-5 in the quarter-finals.It’s hard to believe we’re here. It would have been a bit too much to have asked of ourselves at the beginning of the year, but the girls dug deep and played hard in the cup games and we’ve got a well deserved place here, Clare said. “The Howe of Fife rugby club are really excited about having a senior team in the BT Cup Finals.”The club have welcomed us – it was new for them at the beginning to have a women’s team. We’re under going a major redevelopment of the clubhouse and what’s been brilliant is the consideration of women and girls’ rugby.”The development received£60,000 from the first round of Scottish Rugby’s Club Sustainability Fund and£350,000 from sportscotland.Glasgow University Women also head to the final with confidence from winning all ten matches in the Scottish 1A BUCS league.But it’s been a different story for their first foray in the BT Women’s National League 1 competition.Glasgow captain Rose Dolan explained: “We were promoted at the end of last season and its been tough. We play on Wednesdays as well so it’s the same team playing twice a week.”But it’s been good to get the experience against the better teams in the league and we’ve definitely developed as a team.”We’ve managed to retain quite a lot of our players so we’ve been able to build rather than starting from scratch.”Glasgow University saw off Garioch 17-12 in the semi-final and defeated Grangemouth Women 27-3 in the quarter-final.Rose said: “A couple of season ago we got in the Bowl final against Morgan, which we unfortunately lost, so there’s a few of us that played in that so we definitely want the win.”We’ve never played Howe so they’re an unknown. The team’s really looking forward to the day. We’ve got a lot of supporters coming so it will be nice for our families to see us playing.”BT Cup Finals Day, BT Murrayfield, Saturday 16 AprilBT Cup Final (kick-off 5.45pm)Sarah Beaney Cup Final (kick-off 3.30pm)BT Men’s Shield Final (kick-off 1.15pm)BT Men’s Bowl Final (kick-off 11am)BT Women’s Plate Final (kick-off 1.30pm)BT Women’s Bowl Final (kick-off 12pm)Tickets cost£10 for adults and£5 for U18, student and senior citizens. In the first instance, please contact your finalist club to purchase tickets as all monies are retained by the club for any tickets they sell.Read about the other BT Cup Finals here and watch out for previews of the other matches this week.