Stew Mel vs Haddington, 27/2/05

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Squad

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

Please keep your diaries free for Sunday - if our supporters could generate even half the noise made by their Stirling counterparts last weekend, it would be very much appreciated!

Riggers' Review

We enter the final month of the season with two league games to play, knowing that victory in just one of them will be enough to ensure a return to the top table of Scottish Rugby for the first time since season 1994-1995. The focus is still there amongst the team, and, in the now traditional on-pitch huddle after a match, Graham Shiel was first to speak: 'One down, two to go.' That was in reference to the call that was made after the defeat by Stirling County last weekend that, if we are going up, we will go up because we deserve to and not by relying on anyone else's failures. The challenge was to win the last three games.

We nearly made it very difficult for ourselves yesterday when a strangely lacklustre first half performance saw us trailing by 15-12 at the interval. Our 12 points came in a ten minute period when Haddington were down to 14 men. For the remainder of the half, Haddington probably just edged the game with some hard driving by their pack and astute tactical kicking by their stand off. This created openings for their right winger to score twice, and both were disappointing scores to concede when we consider how good our defence had been the week before.

Our tries in the first half came through Shaun McMurchy and Euan Clark. The fact Shaun was on the pitch at all was amazing, considering the state his ankle had been in after last Saturday's game. The fact he couldn't walk on Monday goes some way to showing his healing powers, but also shows his determination to get the job done and be part of it. Certainly, since missing the Murrayfield Wanderers game through suspension, he has come into his own and is producing the goods week, in week out.

A half-time talking to from the coaches didn't initially have the effect we had been looking for, as Haddington, once again, had the edge. After Sheesh earned ten minutes in the sin bin for retaliating to being punched, the omens were not looking good. We were, however, looking by far the fitter team at this stage, and, with Ross Rennie and Gareth Flockhart to the fore, we started to offload balls out of tackles and make good yards. From a lineout taken up into midfield by Berg, the ball came back blind to Eck, and, with Gav screaming for the ball, Eck used his Magic™ to dummy and accelerate his way through to the line to take us back into the lead.

This was short lived as Haddington, once again, came back at us, and, when their replacement went over to give them a 20-19 lead with 25 minutes to go, the game was anyone's for the taking. Thankfully, a purple patch similar the one we enjoyed in the first game at Neilson Park occurred, and we scored three good tries through Gav Sharp, Graham Lind (his tenth of the season) and Sam Hendry. This quickly moved the score to 36-20 and the game out of reach of Haddington. We had plenty of opportunities to extend the lead still further, but good defence and some careless mistakes meant the scoreboard never moved again.

We were then treated to two final whistles and the satisfaction that we had comfortably beaten a team who, traditionally, beat us more than we beat them in tight encounters. We move onto Selkirk next week and a game against a team going well since the turn of the year. They managed to beat our friends at Raeburn Place in the Cup yesterday in a 41-41 draw by virtue of having scored more tries, so their confidence will be up.

We should also be strengthened by the return of both Stephan De Beer and Ben Leathes, who both missed the game yesterday, although their deputies did a more than adequate job in their absence. It would be great to have a large support down at Philiphaugh next weekend to help cheer the squad on.

Riggers

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