Dundee HSFP RFC vs Stew Mel, 11/10/03

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team to play Dundee HSFP RFC at Mayfield on Saturday, kick off 3 pm, is:

The team shows four changes in personnel from last Saturday's win over Selkirk. Out through injury are Euan Clark and Mike Elliott, and they are replaced by Stuart Thom and Fraser Deeming. Graham Shiel will be playing for the Barbarians in the World Rugby Classic tournament in Bermuda this week and is replaced by Richard Borthwick, with Sam Hendry moving to Stand Off and Tyronne Anderson to Full Back to accommodate Borth on the right wing.

Up front, Stephan de Beer is preferred in the starting tight head role to Simon Capaldi.

On the injury front, Nick Wood is still struggling with the leg infection which caused him to withdraw during the warm up last weekend, but should return to training on Tuesday. Mike and Euan are both struggling with knocks that also should have them back training next week. Mark Welch is out with knee ligament damage suffered in the Kelso game and should return to action in mid-November. Steve Cully returned to action last week and will soon be pushing to reclaim the 1st XV position he held for most of last season. Sky Laurie's thumb will still be in plaster for a couple more weeks and Jonny Jenkins has had the cast removed from his ankle and is waiting for updates on his rehabilitation.

Nick Penny has recovered from the back injury he suffered before the Murrayfield Wanderers game, but has opted to go to South Africa with the RICS (Surveyors) touring team. He will be unavailable for the next couple of weeks.

The bus to Dundee will leave Inverleith at noon on Saturday if anyone wants a lift; your support would be very welcomed by the team.

Riggers' Review

Sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and admit that you've come up against a team who are better than you. There is no disgrace in that - in fact, Dundee have a team that I'd expect to go very far this season. They have a combination of big, powerful forwards, who can do their chores both at the set piece and in the loose, and backs with pace aplenty. I don't think we really matched them in any area on Saturday, and that is a pretty humbling experience. If you look at the players they have recruited, they have been very lucky. Not every club gets a Lindsay Graham turning up to play for them as they now live in the area. Satch is a player I know from age group rugby many years ago, and who should have gone onto bigger things. Certainly, when you see how some of the Scotland team at the World Cup are apparently unable to catch and pass, then you wonder how a player like Satch slipped through the net.

But enough of Dundee - where do we go from here? Well, in many ways, I liken the situation to earlier this year when we were on the receiving end of a fair hammering up at Meggetland in a friendly with Boroughmuir. We responded from that by going on to play some of our best rugby of the season because we had been exposed to a very good side who played the game at a level higher than we had been doing up until then. There are similar comparisons that can be made after Saturday. It is up to the players to respond in the right manner. They are still good rugby players - that much hasn't changed.

We will certainly need to take the lessons to be learned from Saturday into the next run of matches. Kirkcaldy come to visit on Saturday afternoon, buoyed by their tremendous win over league leaders Gala. We then travel to Netherdale and Riverside Park, before getting involved in the Cup and then finishing the first half of the league season with a home game against West. It is a tough run of fixtures, but, then, there no easy games in this league. We know that you have to be at your best at least to be competitive, and, too often this season, we have been just below that level.

We must take heart from the fact that we created chances against Dundee on Saturday, and, if we could have been more clinical, we could have gone in at half time ahead. I'm not saying we would have deserved to have been ahead at half time, but it was possible that we could have been leading. It will be a tough week at training. There are technical aspects of our play that we need to iron out this week, and I'm sure Macca and Benzo will have plans afoot for training. If we take on board the lessons learned, then I'm pretty sure we'll be in a happier frame of mind at Inverleith at 4.30 pm next Saturday afternoon.

Riggers

Stew Mel Stats

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