We're happy to be the hunted, says Beckett

SARAH Beckett admits Gloucester-Hartpury have made an underwhelming start to their title defence but believes that's partly due to competition across the PWR being at an alltime high.

- BEN JAYCOCK

The versatile forward, who can operate at either second or back row, returned to action last month from an upper body injury that ruled her out of the opening six rounds.

Back-to-back reigning champions Glouces ter-Hartpury suffered more losses in the opening seven rounds than they had across the previous two campaigns.

The 25-year-old feels their competitors have upped their game this year, desperate to take a scalp on them.

"Everyone puts out their best performance against us," Beckett told The Rugby Paper.

"We have been at the top for two years now and people want to knock us off. In the first year, people were quite happy for us to be up there because we were someone new but in the second season, teams hoped we wouldn't do it again and we did.

Now they definitely don't want us to do it a third time, so we are the hunted and we relish that. We can't let that pressure get to us, that pressure is a privilege.