KENDAL Ladies Wasps suffered a 32-22 defeat to Crewe and Nantwich in the opening game of their season at Mint Bridge.

The Wasps showed plenty of fighting spirit to battle back from 15-0 down to tie the game against well-organised opponents – but two late tries saw Crewe pick up the win.

Crewe dominated for the first half hour as Wasps struggled to get out of their own half, but the home defence did well to keep the score down to three unconverted tries as Crewe went 15-0 up.

However Kendal pulled a try back when Samara Tomlinson almost got to the line but passed the ball onto Hayley Hodgson to crash over for the score. Full back Tamar Benson made a good attempt at the difficult conversion.

Three minutes later the Wasps were back in the game as Amy Orrow gathered a loose ball from a Crewe mistake to pass the ball on to Hodgson to score her second try of the afternoon – reaching out to touch the ball down despite tacklers hanging on to her – to leave Kendal just five points behind at half time

The Wasps had the better of the opening play of the second half and were level after ten minutes the Wasps as Hodgson completed her hat trick.

Crewe slowly came more into the game and started to return to their good ball-handling of the opening half hour, and with ten minutes to play went over from short range for a try after a period of pressure in the Kendal twenty two.

From the kick off it appeared the contest was over as the ball was gathered by a Crewe player who broke through for a solo try, converted to make it 15-27.

But the Wasps were not finished, and in injury time pulled back to within a single score with a fourth try by Hodgson before full back Benson added the conversion.

The Wasps needed to attack from the kick off and some over-eagerness led to handling errors so thatr it was Crewe who finished with a further try to make the final score 22-32.