Eva Donaldson will be playing in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for Sale Sharks in a big game against Saracens this weekend as she looks to continue her recent good form which may earn her a Scotland spot for the Women’s Six Nations opener with Wales on April 11.
Second-row/back-row Donaldson, the 24-year-old Stirling County product, will meet up with the wider Scottish squad on Tuesday at Oriam as the build up to the showpiece event starts to crank up.
However, before that she will be playing in a showpiece PWR English top flight game on Saturday.
Any game being played at a 62,850 capacity modern stadium is a big one – Saracens and Sale are meeting at the Spurs’ football ground before the Saracens-Northampton Saints men’s ‘Showdown 6’ PREM clash – and this one is especially big.
A recent run of five league wins on the trot sees Sale now sitting fourth in the standings and with hopes of making it to the play-offs after a bottom of the table finish last year.
They have just two regular season games left though – this match and then a trip to third placed Exeter Chiefs in round 18 on June 7 after the Six Nations – and have the likes of Trailfinders Women, who have an extra game to play, breathing down their necks.
Saracens are second and, along with Gloucester Hartpury, set the PWR pace, but 21 Scotland capper Donaldson and Sale are feeling good going into this one.
She will start at six and said: “I think the occasion is obviously going to amazing and I think the team are very excited to head down to such a fabulous stadium.
“But in the build up we’ve tried to take away this sort of event element per se, we’re just trying to just focus on it being another game no matter where you’re playing it.
“It’s a side bonus that the game is in a really cool stadium and that’ll be a really great experience and we’ve tried to for sure just concentrate on what’s actually important for us which will be the 80 minutes.
“I think it would mean everything to the girls if we can go on and make the play-offs.
“After the team finished bottom last year, making the play-offs wasn’t necessarily maybe in the initial plan for this season.
But now that we’re in touching distance of being there come the end of the regular season it just gives us that extra fire and that extra spirit to really push on and show everyone that we do have an opportunity and that we are good enough to get there.”
Former Edinburgh University player Donaldson joined Sale last summer from Leicester Tigers and had to battle for a starting spot, but head coach Tom Hundson now sees her as a key part of the pack.
“Eva has gone from probably pre-Christmas the one that always missed out or the one that always sat on the bench to being, at the moment, undroppable,” he said.
“Her lineout work is phenomenal and our lineout percentage is very, very healthy and, actually, we’re now stealing a bit of lineout ball as well.
“At the minute we are hard to beat because we’re a little bit niggling and annoying and that is Eva – in a good way!
“She kind of gives us little bit of the glue in the forward pack and is playing very well just now.”
Donaldson is glad she made the move to Sale and is excited about the new Scotland era coming up too having been at the Rugby World Cup last year and been part of the international set up for a while now.
“It’s been really good joining Sale, it’s been so easy to fit in here,” she stated.
“And I think for sure my game has improved. Working with the likes of Charlie [Beckett, the defence coach] has been great for example. He’s really brought our defence on as a team and my personal defence on massively which I think has been vital in big games like this Saracens one.
“With Scotland I think it definitely does feel like a new era, but I think we’ve got a good mix of keeping things how they’ve been and also a bit of fresh energy for us to change things up and go from there so it should be really exciting.”
Eva Donaldson is pictured – thanks to Sale Sharks
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