Stew Mel vs Grangemouth, 20/9/03

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team for Saturday's game with Grangemouth RFC, 3 pm kick off at Inverleith, is:

The team has three changes from last Saturday, with Marc Karapanovic, Stephan De Beer and Graham Lind all dropping out through injury. Their places are taken by Fraser Deeming, Si Capaldi and Sandy Storrar respectively.

Injury also made Matt Dey, released by the Edinburgh Gunners for this weekend, unavailable for selection.

Riggers' Review

If, before kick off, you'd offered any of the Stewart's Melville supporters a six try performance and a 46-17 victory, I doubt many would have turned you down. So, come the final whistle yesterday afternoon, why were there long faces and a general air of disappointment hanging over Inverleith? No pleasing some folk, I guess!

The first half performance was one of the best from a Stewart's Melville side in a long time. Macca had asked the players beforehand for control, commitment and composure. He got that in abundance in the first half and the reward came with five tries. It makes a difference, too, when Sam is slotting the kicks over. It keeps the scoreboard ticking along, and a 7 out of 9 performance was pretty good.

The second half was always going to be difficult as we tried to build on what we'd done so well in the first half. We know Grangemouth, and the last thing they would ever do as a club is lie down. They proved that with a dogged and gritty second half which they ended up winning on the scoreboard. There was little shape to our second half performance; certainly, losing Clarky to a 'professional foul' for 10 minutes didn't help our cause, but we stopped doing the little things well. The little things that, in the first half, had made the game look so easy.

We can, however, still take lots of positives from the performance, and I'm sure we will. Sandy Storrar came into the back row for his first league start and was outstanding. Not bad for an 18 year old! In my eyes, he certainly pushed Dalgy hard for Man of the Match honours, but Dalgy is getting better and better each game. Si Capaldi did a good first half stint, then Andy Davidson showed up well when he came on to replace him for most of the second half. He was under pressure in a few scrums, but, for a 17 year old, he's showing fantastic potential.

Generally, we have to be happy. We're starting to play better. The seconds are winning - and winning well, especially away from home. Our injury list is dwindling, and there is some serious competition for places. You only had to look at the faces of the injured players yesterday to know how tough the competition is. That is what we have been striving for, and, finally, we seem to have a squad capable of providing the competition. Nobody can get into a comfort zone, and that can only be good.

Next week we have the short trip across town to Murrayfield Wanderers in our only real local derby of the season. I'm sure that is going to be another tough encounter, and we'll need to up the performance another couple of notches if we are to come away with the win. It's been a couple of years since we have played Wandies in the league, and, from memory, they won the last couple of encounters, the season they won promotion to Premier 2. Hopefully we can secure the points next Saturday and keep climbing up the league table.

Riggers

Stew Mel Stats

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