Societe Generale Valley and CPM Gai Wu Falcons maintained their perfect records - and top contenders status - after easy wins in today’s KPMG Women’s Premiership, while SCAA First Pacific Causeway Bay snared their first win of the season against Kowloon.

The widely expected close contest between Valley and Borrelli Walsh USRC Tigers seemed on the cards with Valley holding a 13-3 lead at halftime, but Valley found another gear in the second half to run out easy winners, 32-3.

Tigers posted the first points on the board early on with a penalty but then allowed 32 points without reply in the remainder at Kings Park. Valley’s first half scoring came off a penalty from Zoe Smith and two unconverted tries, the first from Laurel Chor who found space out wide in the right corner. Captain Olivia Coady then capped an intense period of forwards pressure to crash over the line to bring the first half score to 13-3.

Sisters Stephanie and Nadia Cuvelier added tries in the second half, Nadia’s coming off a beautiful 50-metre run, to bookend Amelie Seure’s score, as the league champions piled on the points. Smith’s conversions in the second half brought the final to 32-3 to Valley.

Valley coach James Elliott said the match was much tougher than the score indicated: “It was a tough game actually and it took us a while to find cohesion, but once we did we were able to assert ourselves on attack. When our defence started to click, we were able to push hard and end up with a convincing win.

“The margin was pretty big but it didn’t credit Tigers who put up some determined resistance,” said Elliott. “Tigers up a tough fight. The battle of the backs was quite good, and the contest at the ruck was also strong. There was a lot of balance between forwards and backs play. In the second half we were able to pull away,” he said.

With a comfortable lead, Elliott was able to get some of his younger players some valuable Premiership time as U17s Kelsie Boutle and Claire Coey both came on and showed well.

Falcons put in a dominant performance of their own with a 65-5 win over Natixis HKFC Ice at Football Club, after leading 40-0 at halftime. The margin of victory surprised even the Falcons coach Lai Yiu-pang.

“It was out of my expectation that the girls would play so well,” said Lai of his charges. “We only made 14 handling errors, down from 30 in our last match. That allowed us to build momentum and keep our structures. The low handling error rate was key.”

Lai was also able to give his youngsters a run this afternoon. “We were able to get everyone off the bench and although there were a few more mistakes and we lost a bit of momentum it was a great opportunity to get them some playing time against a quality side like Football Club,” Lai added.

Standouts included fullback Maxson Lo Pui-shan who scored three of Falcons eleven tries. Lee Tsz-ting was also singled out by Lai for her ability to control the attack: “BB helped us a lot. We attacked space well and she opted for the right channel every time, everything today was right time, right place,” Lai noted.

SCAA First Pacific Causeway Bay team meanwhile took out its early season frustrations after failing to record a win over last season’s top finishers in succession as they edged a battling Kowloon outfit 12-0.

Despite conceding their first points on the season, Gai Wu’s convincing win was enough to lift them to the top of the table, a rarity considering Valley’s two-season long unbeaten streak has so far continued this year. A better points differential has Falcons a top the roost although level with Valley on 20 points while Football Club and Tigers are tied-third on 15 points followed by Causeway Bay in fifth place with 4 points and City, who were on bye today, having yet to score a point.