Stew Mel vs East Kilbride, 31/8/02

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville Team for Saturday's game with East Kilbride, 3 pm kick off at Inverleith, is:

The team selected for the first league game is minus a few first team members, but, nevertheless, is still a very strong outfit, and one that we are confident will start the season with a victory. The squad have trained very hard over the Summer and have had a good pre-season build up. East Kilbride will be a big challenge and, as a recently relegated team, are something of an unknown quantity for us. Nick Penny's last game for Watsonians happened to be against East Kilbride, so we sort of know what to expect. The team realise that a good start to the league campaign is required if we are to achieve one of the 4 promotion slots available.

Still to come into consideration are Kenny Milligan (wedding), Fraser Deeming (injured), Steven Reed (injured), Richard Borthwick (holiday), Stuart Bartwicki (holiday), David Hourston (wedding), Daniel Smit (not cleared), Stewart Bennet (injured), Mark Paton (wedding), Simon Capaldi (holiday) and Koli Latailakepa, our new Tongan prop who arrived today from New Zealand. Finally, someone that looks like a prop! Koli should be cleared for the game with Ross High next weekend.

Of the injured, only Stewart Bennet is likely to miss more than one game.

Riggers' Review

Well, at the end of the day, it was a victory, and that, for the team, is a great start to the season. The build up to the first game was littered with call-offs and unavailabilities, right up to kick off, in fact, when we first lost Captain and Stand Off Fraser Pollock to the imminent arrival of his new daughter Amy. Fraser was joined on the sidelines by Mike Elliott, who failed a fitness test before kick off.

This left us with a new looking back division, though all the players who were in it have all, in the past, been first team regulars. As we are trying to build a big squad, we knew we still had personnel who could come in and do a job. Captain for the day Nick Penny stressed that the easy option would be to blame the absence of various players should we lose and left the team in no doubt that this was not an acceptable excuse. We were still good enough to win and, thankfully, the boys proved the point.

A scrappy game occurred, with the wind dominating the game. We played with it at our backs in the first half and did not use it very well. The performance was lacking composure, with the forwards' and backs' decision making poor, and our chances of continuity were denied by an officious referee who favoured the team being negative at the breakdown, hardly in accordance with the SRU's Directive to referees that was passed out last month. John Healy was sin-binned in the first half for giving the EK number 3 the sort of treatment his play deserved, a good rucking apparently being deemed a bigger offence than the continual killing of the ball at any and every break-down.

We turned 5-3 ahead and the worry was that this wouldn't be enough. This feeling wasn't helped by Struan Samson being binned in the second half and EK going into a 16-8 lead during his absence. Thankfully, on his return, with Chris Bissett moving into Stand Off and Scott Bowman onto the wing, the continuity started to come and we looked the fitter side as we started putting phases together. A great break out led by Murray Thomson, Mark Welch and Scott saw us drive deep into the EK 22, where Fraser Stott blatantly killed the ball, coming from the wrong side to do so, and was deservedly put in the bin for the final 10 minutes. We kicked the penalty and, from the resultant kick off, set off to win the game.

I would try and describe the try that Scott Bowman touched down underneath the posts, but I doubt I could do it justice. A thing of rare beauty, fit to win any game. Scott kicked the conversion and, after controlling the last 5 minutes, the sight that greeted the final whistle was of a jubilant team, coaches and support who were glad we'd won, but doubted that they could cope with nailbiters like that every week.

So, down to Tranent next weekend for our first ever league encounter with Ross High. Having played with the likes of Alan Kittle and Michael McNeill in the past, I'm only too aware of the quality of rugby players that Ross High produce. For a home grown team to be playing their first Premiership match at home, we know we will be in for a tough game. Hopefully, since most of our games are in the Edinburgh area, we can get a bit of travelling support which will encourage the boys home. We'll certainly need it down there.

Riggers

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