Letchworth RFC are seeking information about an incident on Friday 13^th when member of the girls team dropped a pile of mirrors on a black cat while walking on the cracks in the pavement underneath a dozen ladders.

This would seem to be the only reasonable explanation for events at National Sevens in Harpenden on Sunday.

After all, in your first event to have your U17 team drawn against one of the eventual finalists (and national champions) would be unfortunate – but not too remarkable. However, to be drawn against both eventual finalists – and to have to play them in your opening two games – does begin to stretch the word “unfortunate” a little. But to then have the same thing happen to your U14 team as well does not so much a stretch “unfortunate” as tear it into small pieces and drop it into a shreader.

When U17 player-of-the-year Naomi Parnell was carried off after five minutes in the opening game the general feeling was that this could not get much worse. It was, however, a mere hors'derve.

Letchworth great hope lay with their U14s. Four regional players in the squad would be bolstered by a fifth from Rochford, who were joining the Hertfordshire team for the day. In retrospect it might have been suspected that something was in the wind when one these girls managed to twist her ankle before even going onto the field. However the remaining regional “stars” then set out to do battle against Dorking with confidence. None of them returned.

“It was nothing that Dorking did”, says John Birch, “it was just a series of unfortunate accidents. But it reached a point where you daren’t look if one of the girls went down… because half the time they weren’t getting up again.

In the space of ten minutes Letchworth suffered more injuries than we had in the entire season to that point. And not just any injuries too – but very selective ones. In particular they lost the captain, the vice captain, the main goal kicker, the fly half, and the hooker. In a quarter of an hour players who had played over a combined total of over 80 games this season were being encased in bandages - and being replaced with girls who had played a combined total of about two.

“In the end all the injuries were relatively minor – though enough to end the tournament for several of the girls straight away – but for a while it felt like a scene from M*A*S*H.

“For our second game we just about found seven girls who could stand and sent them “over the top” to a rather inevitable hammering. But after that things improved. Bandages were thrown aside and girls hopped around at remarkable speed for the games against Petersfield and Andover. One of them even scored a try, despite having a sprained wrist!”

But did the team enjoy the day?

“Yes – amazingly enough. I think after a start like that we knew we were never going to win anything, so just completing the tournament became the main aim – and scoring the odd try a bonus. But it is a great shame though as this U14 team at least will obviously never play together again and we’ll never know how good they were.

“Still, someone calculated that we could enter the National Sevens every year for the next century or more and not get a draw as bad as that again – leave alone suffer all those injuries. So next year it’ll maybe our turn to get the rub of the green.”