They beat their B side in their last Division Ia match of the season, 57-7, to snatch the title from reigning champions St Clement A, who had led the table for most of the season.
St Clement beat Convent A twice on the way and seemed too far ahead for the chasing pack to catch them – until last week when Convent A won their match against St Brelade A by an enormous margin and goal-average suddenly became the deciding factor.
Going into last night’s game, Convent A needed to score 44 goals more than their B side to take the title.
‘We thought it was 34 we needed, but looking at the maths again I realised I’d been given some wrong figures and it turned out to be 44,’ team manager Linda Andrews said.
Despite the scoreline, however, both the Convent A captain Jane Le Feuvre, and Andrews, said that the win had not been as easy as it looked.
‘At the start there were a lot of nerves because we all knew what was riding on the game, and there were some dropped balls and missed interceptions,’ Le Feuvre said.
‘But it was touch and go to get the goals we needed to win the league and it went to the last quarter – there were a lot of very relieved players when that final whistle went.’ Said Andrews: ‘The B team’s defence didn’t give an inch, but their attack was weaker, and our defence was very good.
We did the job we had to do.’ The B team were without their main shooter, Sharon Ollivier – who had given plenty of advance notice of her unavailability – and under-17 England squad girl Serena Guthrie, who started the season in the B side as WD, but her later appearances for the A side meant she could no longer play for the B.
Convent C were also playing last night, and the club was responsible for providing the necessary umpires, so reserves to strengthen the B side were scarce.
Chris Hicks, the B team captain, was frank.
‘We lost because we were without Sharon and the A team marked our remaining shooter, Lynsey Pitman, out of the game.
You can’t blame them for that – it was a very effective tactic: you can’t win a game if you’re not scoring goals.
‘They (the A side) had a mission and knew what they had to do.
The worst thing was that the atmosphere wasn’t very pleasant, with some of the spectators from other clubs jeering when we made a mistake.
‘There’s no-one in our team who would deliberately throw a game, and a championship doesn’t depend on just one match.
Some of our players were very upset, the result looked awful after we’d done so well earlier in the season.
‘It was a no-win situation for the B side.
It was never in our power to beat them this time, but we didn’t make the win happen for them and while it’s nice for the club that Convent won the championship, it was all a bit strange and not really a great celebration for the club.
‘It’s not the sort of atmosphere we would have chosen to end the season with.’ There have been queries about why the decider ended up being between Convent’s A and B sides.
JNA President Ann Halliwell said that with the two-week disruption to the fixtures due to the cold weather earlier in the season was what had caused the problem.
‘We had so may matches to rearrange, and they would have been rearranged in the order in which they were cancelled.
‘It may be that it would have been the last game of the season anyway.
Everyone can be right with hindsight, but no-one expected that we’d stll be playing at the end of April.
If we’d have known how it was going to turn out we could have done something about changing the fixtures, but we had no control over match results, it was just one of those things.’ She added that, with the title being decided on goal average, the league tables will be published next season, from the beginning, with the goal averages included so that every team is clear exactly what is required.
Zoe Hotton, St Clement A coach: ‘What can I say except well done to Convent for winning.
We shouldn’t have let them beat us earlier in the season.
But they’ll have a battle on their hands next season.’ In last night’s other matches St Lawrence A beat Convent C 34-27 in Division Ib.
Quackers A beat St Saviour A 48-26 in Division II.
