Stew Mel vs Edinburgh Accies, 12/1/02

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP team to play Edinburgh Accies at Inverleith at 2pm on Saturday is:

The team shows a couple of changes in the forwards since our last game against Berwick on December 15th. Andy Kelly returns to the hooking position, having been used in the back row for the last couple of games, which means that Andy Cadzow drops down to the bench. Willie Laidlaw returns to the second row, where he will join Mark Paton, while Lee Crafar drops into the No.8 position for this important league fixture. The final change sees Dougie Rycroft start at openside for the first time this season. Dougie, last season's School 1st XV captain, has waited patiently for his chance to prove what he can do, and is eager to grasp the opportunity with both hands.

Dougie comes in for Graham Lind, who is departing on Sunday for a new career in New York. Lindy will be greatly missed, but we wish him all the best for the future.

The backs are unchanged for the fourth game running and, with the exception of the injured Steven Reed, all backs at the club are fit and available for selection.

Onto the bench come Edinburgh winger Gavin Sharp and Stuart Donald. Both have been playing well for the 2nd XV and will surely take any opportunities that come their way on Saturday.

Riggers

Match Report

(To follow)

Riggers' Review

Well, we got the bonus point we were looking for. Unfortunately, however, it wasn't accompanied by the 4 points for a win. We never really deserved anything out of the game, so one point is, indeed, a 'bonus'. I've been team manager for 15 months now, and I don't think, in all that time, I've seen such a bad performance from the team. Yes, we've had some disappointing results, but the manner of yesterday's performance was baffling.

You look at the position we are in. Six games to go, and promotion is in our own hands. Six wins sees us being promoted to Premier 2, which is what the players say they want. Yet the team go out on the pitch and, from the sidelines, it looks like there is no desire, no hunger or ambition to achieve the first of these wins. Surely promotion should be motivation enough?

Rugby is a psychological game. The first time you do anything in a game has a massive bearing on what is going to happen throughout the proceedings. And on Saturday? First scrum - lost against the head; first lineout - lost against the throw; first tackle - missed; first ruck - turned over in contact; first attack - ball lost in contact; first kick to touch - missed. Enough said!

There were a few contributing factors to all these errors, not least an Accies side hell bent on revenge after the hammering we gave them in September. If ever a team was 'up' for a game, it was Accies on Saturday. They fully deserved to win. The second factor, and this is the more worrying one, was the application of the Stew Mel team. There seemed to be a general malaise about proceedings. It looked like everyone was waiting for somebody to spark us out of the slumbers we were in. To be fair, people tried to give a spark to the proceedings, but we were having to do it from our own 22. To cap it all, whoever tried to spark us into life would make an initial break then lose the ball in contact. It took us until the 52nd minute of the game to get into the Accies 22. Very few times in the 80 minutes did we manage to put more than three phases together.

At half-time, turning 10-0 down having played into the wind, you hoped that the team would sense that, despite being so dreadful, we could still get something out of the game. Accies, for all their possession, at this stage hadn't really converted the pressure into points, although they did score two good tries, with David Callum, their Scotland U19 No.8, instrumental in both. When people say there aren't any good youngsters coming through in club rugby, they haven't seen this guy. Still a bit raw, but what an impact he makes when he has the ball.

Anyway, the half-time team talk centred around using the wind when kicking, holding on to 50-50 passes, and trying to create phases in the hope that we would be able to get the ball out to the outside backs. Accies kicked off to us and it seemed, for a minute or so, that the boys had paid attention to what was said, then we gave the ball away and were straight onto the back foot. We then gave away two very soft scores to put us 22-3 down (Fraser had managed to kick a penalty). The fourth try, which came from a good kick out of defence by Stew Mel,really summed up the whole performance. Three chasers went to meet the catcher, he beat them very easily and suddenly he was in the clear. Game over.

A fight back was staged and Simon Rowan and Fraser Deeming scored tries, with Fraser Pollock converting the latter to get us the bonus point. We still had four minutes to go and tried to level the game, but it was Accies who really came closer to scoring another try in the closing stages. A very disappointing performance in front on one of our biggest crowds in years. We even managed to attract the Scotland Team Manager down to watch his old club. For the third season in a row, when Dougie has watched, we have lost. It is good to see him come down to Inverleith, hopefully next time we'll win! Dougie did make an interesting observation regarding our defence when he said that he felt the players ball watched rather than looking at what the opposition were doing. This was certainly a factor in a couple of the tries conceded and it is something that needs to be addressed. To be fair, Stuart Reid had identified the same thing when he ran a defence session on the Tuesday evening. That and communication were the two key factors in our defensive approach that were sadly lacking on Saturday.

The Stew Mel Man of the Match award went to Dougie Rycroft on his full league debut. Dougie was about the only player to come out of the game with any credit and looks like he'll be set for a long run in the team. Well done Dougie.

Next week sees us back on the road to Glasgow Southern. Bottom line is that promotion is still in our own hands. We don't, at this stage, need to rely on other teams helpings us out. Although a few more performances like that and it will be back to the drawing board.

Riggers

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