Team news: Salvin selects play-off squad

Exeter Chiefs Women’s head coach Steve Salvin has made just two changes to the team that beat Sale Sharks last Sunday.

As Chiefs Women head into their second-versus-third place PWR play-off against Saracens Women, Sabrina Poulin has moved from the wing to full-back with Katie Buchanan starting on the right wing.

Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald is back to start at hooker after coming off the pitch with an HIA early in last weekend’s game. PWR Team of the Year loosehead prop Hope Rogers continues her run in the front row along with Amy Rule as DaLeaka Menin extends her stay at No 8.

Chiefs go into the game with the most scrums (161) this season, winning 131. As well as boasting the league’s top tackler in Maisy Allen, her fellow flanker Emily Robinson leads the league in both total ruck entries with 392 and attacking ruck entries with 351.

Meanwhile, Chiefs Women lead the PWR in both kick metres with 9,166 this season and average 29.6 metres per kick while Claudia Moloney-MacDonald has scored 10 tries in 10 appearances, six coming in the last two games. She made six clean breaks against Sale and covered 145 metres. Saracens’ fast pitch will be very appealing this weekend

Winger Claudia Moloney-MacDonald said: “I would rather play at Sandy Park on grass, but if I'm going to play on an artificial pitch, that one is one of the nicer ones. I guess for us, we’ll just enjoy the speed of it. I know Sab [Sabrina Poulin] is very excited. We've got some quick forwards as well. I'm sure Maisy Allen's excited about the speed of the pitch too. It doesn't massively change how we're going to play. We know what we need to do to beat Sarries, so we just got to go out and do that.”

Both Chiefs teams go into play-offs this weekend – the only club to do so. Chiefs Men head to The Rec to play Bath Rugby tomorrow before Chiefs Women travel to North London for Sunday’s game. Chiefs Women have taken two five-point wins and scored 17 tries in the last two weeks in stark contrast to Chiefs’ 45-7 defeat at the StoneX Stadium four months ago.

Chiefs Women’s head coach Steve Salvin said: “In that first 20 minutes away at Saracens, we weren't clinical enough. We had opportunity, we probably had possibly even more opportunities than Saracens in terms of 22 entries, we just didn't execute any of them.

“In our last four games, we have been clinical when we've got down into those areas of the field. We're a team that wants to play with tempo and we’re a team that's very comfortable playing territorially, whichever one of those things gets us into the 22. I think the crucial bit for us this week is going to be making sure we execute those opportunities when they come.”

Salvin continued: “We're happy with the way we're performing and we think we've built some good momentum over the last two weeks but we're not naive to think that we’ll turn up this weekend and a similar sort of thing will happen. We need to make sure we execute the same level of performance, but we're going to be up against a fully motivated Saracens team who are competing to win the PWR. “

Chiefs hooker Emily Tuttosi, who had an elongated spell off the bench last weekend, said: “We're buzzing. Being in the play-offs after not quite making it there last year is big for us. It's a privilege to be there and we've been working hard all season, and hopefully we can put together a solid 80-minute performance.

“I think the big thing for us is just being technical and physical for the whole 80 minutes. I think at times of season, we haven't been consistent playing from the first whistle to the last, and if we can do that, I think we put ourselves in a really good place.”

Tickets for Sunday’s game are available here. Supporter can also watch the game on TNT or get live updates from the Chiefs match centre here.

Exeter Chiefs Women

15 Sabrina Poulin
14 Katie Buchanan
13 Alex Tessier
12 Nancy McGillivray
11 Claudia Moloney-MacDonald
10 Liv McGoverne
9 Flo Robinson (vc)
1 Hope Rogers
2 Cliodhna Moloney-MacDonald
3 Amy Rule
4 Linde van der Velden
5 Dorothy Wall
6 Emily Robinson (c)
7 Maisy Allen (vc)
8 DaLeaka Menin

Replacements:
16 Emily Tuttosi
17 Abby Middlebrooke
18 Lola Whitley
19 Gabriella Nigrelli
20 Zoë Dare
21 Lucy Nye
22 Damielle Preece
23 Merryn Elworthy