Women’s varsity match moves to Twickenham

Until this year the annual game between the universities took place at each university in turn, with this year's game taking place at Grange Road, Cambridge. However, following an annoucement that from next year the women's boat race would take place over the same course as the men's, the two univerities women's teams will now meet at Twickenham on December 10th.

"Both clubs are delighted to have been able to finally extend an invitation to the women to join us at Twickenham to take part in one of rugby's greatest amateur fixtures," said Cambridge University RUFC chairman Nick Bennett."In recent years we have grown closer as institutions, at both Oxford and Cambridge, and this move has led to a complete integration. With England currently the world champions in women's rugby, the timing couldn't be better for us to combine our two great matches into one very special occasion at Twickenham.

"We will be celebrating a century of playing at the home of English rugby in 2021 and a year later will be the 150th anniversary of the first Varsity Match. We aim through our closer links with the women's section of now fully integrated rugby clubs to actively promote the game to both sexes to drive participation. We also hope to be able to market the Varsity Match day to a broader audience to help create an even better occasion and atmosphere."

This year's game proved to be a one-sided affair with Cambridge University running out 47-0 winner over of Oxford University at Grange Road, Cambridge. The Light Blues raced into a 20-0 lead by half time, before finishing the rout in the second half, having scored nine tries in total.

"It was absolutely fantastic, the girls played the best game I think they've played all season so I couldn't have asked for more as president," said Cambridge captain Katie Holmes. "We knew what we were coming into it with, and we have had a lot of preparation knowing what their game plan was. Luckily, they put some stuff on Youtube so we could have a sneak preview of what they might be doing, but I think it really did fall into place as we had all our strongest players together playing as a cohesive unit which was fantastic.""We've been winning all season so that has put us into a fantastic position going into this. We knew that this really felt like it was our year. We've had fantastic coaching from Jack Baird and Ben Penfold, and I felt like we were favourites.

Holmes had predicted that gaining dominance in the scrum could be crucial, and that proved to be the case."The scrum was fantastic – as tight-head prop I'm going to say that – but we were dominating them and we scored a try driving their scrum over the try-line and the No 8 just put it over the line."

"It was great to avenge the boys' defeat at Twickenham this year, which was both a record-breaking loss and a record-breaking run of losses, but I really feel like we've avenged that", she added.