Stew Mel vs Kelso, 7/9/03

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team to play Kelso RFC on Sunday in Premier 2 at Inverleith, kick off 3 pm, is:

The team is the same as the one that started against Biggar last week, the coaches leaving the responsibility of rectifying last Saturday's result with the team that played.

Borth and Welchy have swapped their positions from last week, while Malcolm MacColl, Danny Smit and Sam Hendry have replaced Simon Capaldi, Andrew Fraser and Fraser Deeming on the bench.

Riggers' Review

Rugby is a simple game. As Jim Calder said before the Biggar game, as he presented the players with their jerseys, 'If you make your tackles and don't give away penalties, then you'll win games of rugby.' Simple enough in theory. It is our execution of this theory that is somewhat lacking at present.

We seem to be our own worst enemies. We have twice got ourselves into positions to win this season and twice we have been on the end of defeats. Yesterday was a step up from the Biggar performance, but, ultimately, it wasn't enough. I can assure you there were no more disappointed people at Inverleith yesterday than the Stewart's Melville team and coaches.

Having played into the strong wind in the first half and turned around 15-8 ahead, we should have gone on to finish Kelso off. Especially when we got another early try and a bonus point within the first couple of minutes of the restart. We then went off the boil for the next 15-20 minutes, however, and allowed a Kelso pack that had been subdued to gather a head of steam and create opportunities for their backs to finish off. They finished off in style, and the loss of three scores turned our advantage into a 27-23 deficit. We then seemed to wake from our slumbers and had a ten minute period of sustained pressure in the Kelso half, but we couldn't quite get over the line. We were left to rue the missed opportunities as Kelso went and scored a fifth try right at the death to deny us a second bonus point.

On reflection, the disruptions we suffered with injuries didn't help. Losing Paul and Clarky in the first half allowed Kelso into the game. Until that point, we were winning every lineout, no matter whose throw it was. This was denying Kelso any possession and also negated their tactic of using the wind and forcing us to kick out for them to regain the ball. Even though Dalgy and Danny are more than capable lineout men, the loss of our two main jumpers ruined this platform. Furthermore, losing Welchy and Ek early in the second half caused further disruption which didn't exactly help our cause.

There's no point dwelling on it too much. Yes, it hurts, but the next game is coming up rapidly and we need to be ready for that. Haddington will cause us different types of problems, and we need to be able to deal with them. No excuses, just deal with it. Hopefully we'll have a clean bill of health, but that seems unlikely, which means there will be changes to the starting line up. The people coming in will have the opportunity to provide the spark that is missing, and, hopefully, bring it all together. I don't think we are too far away. We're scoring tries - and some good ones, at that. If we can improve the defence then we'll become a difficult team to beat.

I'll finish by thanking Doc Thomson for all his hard work on Sunday afternoon. Its been a while since the Doctor has been so busy at Inverleith, and I hope it is a long time before it happens again. I'm sure Paul Keith and the two injured Kelso players appreciate the work he did yesterday, and I hope all three are back on the pitch again soon.

Riggers

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