And that’s the Half [Season]!
Both the Women’s A and B leagues wrapped up the first half of the 2018-19 season the past weekend, with all of the teams competing.
This season sees 12 teams competing across the two Swiss Women’s leagues, with the Avusy Athenas entering the LNB this season and Konstanz-St.Gallen forming a new joint team splitting off their long-time LNA-partner Zurich Valkyries. This allowed to change the LNB into a competitive league of 6 teams and marks the highest number of senior women’s players in Switzerland yet. It also means that the number of teams competing has doubled since the start of the 2016-17 season (that’s only two years ago!)
Highlights from the season so far included Lausanne moving up from LNFB last season to LNFA, where they scored some points and won their first game; the Mermigans marking some serious territory finishing 4th of the table going into the break; and the Lucerne Dangels beating the current champions CERN Wildcats in a tightly fought match with the final score 0-3. Lucerne is so far unbeaten and is going into the winter break at the top of the table.
In the LNB, both Zug and Winterthur won their first game ever, the Switzers beat the newly entered team of Konstanz-St.Gallen who overall had a very strong start into the season, and the Avusy Athenas are collecting valuable experience in their first competitive season. In this league, it is the Basel Birds who are yet to beat and who have had a flawless first half of the season.
The new structures also produced some challenges in the women’s competitions. Both the LNFA and LNFB leagues adhered to World Rugby’s U-19 scrum rule as a safety precaution, and a higher-than-usual number of yellow cards were awarded to players.
The second half of the Women’s season kicks off in March 2019.
View the latest standings for the two leagues below:
Text credit : Christa Herremann
women(A)suisserugby.com
