Stew Mel vs Edinburgh Accies, 28/8/04

• Click here to jump to Riggers' Review
• Click here to jump to Stew Mel Stats

Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team to play Edinburgh Accies at Inverleith on Saturday, kick off 3 pm, is:

The team has four players making their competitive debuts for the Club this Saturday, namely Stephan Burger, Shaun McMurchy, Alex Clarke and Ross Rennie. The squad has had a tough pre-season build up but are more than ready for the real business to commence, with everyone looking for an improvement on last season's results and performances.

Dougie Rycroft, Scott Riddell, Paul Keith, Stephen Dalgleish, Gareth Flockhart and Sandy Storrar all missed out on coming into consideration for selection due to injuries, although Dalgy and Sandy should both line up for the 2nd XV on Saturday and come back into contention thereafter. Sam Hendry, Fraser Rankine and Ben Leathes are currently on holiday and should be available for the third league game of the season.

Riggers' Review

To start with a solid win and earn ourselves 5 league points is something that we would all have taken before kick off, and that is what we duly did. There was some disappointment in the camp after the game that the form we showed in the first 25 minutes wasn't maintained for longer, but that will come as the guys get match sharper and become more used to playing alongside each other.

There were a number of pleasing aspects to the performance; the scrum looked destructive when they wanted to, the lineout started to function better, the defence was well organised and scrambled well when needed, there were good lines of running from the backs in attack and the spirit within the team was good. On the negative side, there were a number of poor decisions made by players, ball was often kicked away poorly, our discipline at the breakdown situation was poor (as two yellow cards for offences underline) and our goalkicking continues to cause us problems. The negatives can all be rectified at training this week, and we can build from there.

The debuts of both Ross Rennie and Alex Clarke also give plenty of hope for the future; for two 18 year olds to slot straight in and adjust to senior rugby the way they did was fantastic, and both have the potential to go a long way in the game. With David Warwick and Jamie Hood also pushing for selection, we are once again fortunate to have been provided with quality youngsters from the school.

Next Saturday sees us make the trip down to Poynder Park to play Kelso. As everyone will remember, they are the only team that we didn't manage to defeat last season, so we go down knowing how tough it will be to win, but also determined to lay the bogey of last season.

Riggers

Stew Mel Stats

Return to 1st XV Fixtures page