Record crowd stays on to see Breach rattle up a hat-trick

Jess Breach joked how she politely turned down a ticket from her mother for this year’s Big Game 12, Harlequins’ annual festive fixture at the home of English Rugby. The event was always circled in the Breach family calendar and this year she not only found herself playing in it, but fittingly set it alight with a first-half hat-trick.

This unprecedented one-off friendly between the two-time Tyrrells Premier 15s runners-up and the Irish Inter-Provincial champions for the past two years – sandwiched in the Christmas period so that players could organise time off from work – reflected the giant leap women’s rugby has taken.

Harlequins’ flanker Giada Franco flew in from her native Italy, while Leinster’s Elise O’Byrne-White had to free up a day from her normal job as a farm vet for the spectacle, which followed the Harlequins’ Gallagher Premiership clash with Leicester, watched by 75,626 fans. More than 7,500 stayed on. It marked a new record for a domestic women’s match played in England. In 2016, Richmond and Saracens played the Women’s Premiership final in front of a couple of hundred people at Twickenham Stoop.

It also fortified Harlequins’ ambition to keep pushing the women’s game. Their players reflected that desire on the pitch – from Rachael Burford terrifically pouncing on an Ellie Green grubber in a carbon copy of the try she scored against Saracens a fortnight ago to Anna Caplice’s determination to round her opposite number and wheel in over the whitewash. Leinster wilted as the match wore on to suffer their first defeat in more than two years. Scoring 5-0 Breach try, 7-0 Green con, 12-0 Breach try, 12-5 Earle try, 17-5 Burford try, 19-5 Green con, 24-5 Caplice try, 26-5 Green con, 26-10 Djougang try, 26-12 O’Connor con, 31-12 Breach try, 33-12 Green con, HT, 33-17 Peat try, 33-19 O’Connor con, 38-19 Cokayne try, 40-19 Scott con, 40-24 Dabanovich-O’Mahony try, 40-26 O’Connor con, 45-26 Fletcher try, 47-26 Scott con. Harlequins E Scott, H Cowell, K Camara, R Burford, J Breach (V Petersson 67), E Green (L Hartridge 52) L Riley (L Packer, 40), G Bourke (T Viksten 60), A Cokayne (L Lyons 60), S Brown (C Edwards 67), D McCormack, A Sheffield, A Caplice (D Catlin 67), G Franco, F Fletcher. Leinster L Farrell McCabe (N Byrne 55), G Miller, E O’Byrne-White (V Hullon 70), M Claffey, M O’Brien (C Cooney 55), S Naoupu, A Hughes, K O’Dywer, V Dabanovich-O’Mahony (J Finlay 68), L Djougang (L Callan 68), D Earle, A McDermott, L Peat, N Ní Dhroma (C Dunne 60), H O’Connor Referee Joy Neville (Ireland).