Murrayfield Wanderers vs Stew Mel, 18/12/04

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team to play Murrayfield Wanderers at Murrayfield on Saturday, kick off 3 pm, is:

A combination of suspensions, injuries and unavailability means five changes to the Stewart's Melville team for the local derby with Murrayfield Wanderers.

Both Euan Clark and Shaun McMurchy are suspended after their third yellow cards of the season last weekend. Euan is replaced by Kenny Bowie, whilst Stephan de Beer moves over to hook from the tight head position. Simon Capaldi comes into the vacated berth.

Both Graham Lind and Stephan Burger have failed to shake off the knocks that they picked up last week. This means a first start on the wing for Jamie Hood, fresh from his sojourn to Australia with the Commonwealth Youth team. Ross Rennie returns for Graham Lind at openside. The final change is Dougie Rycroft for the unavailable Gareth Flockhart.

On the bench, two of the club's most experienced players, Stephen Dalgleish and Chris Bissett, return after injury enforced absences. Also introduced for potential debuts are prop Richard Hood and flanker David O'Neill.

Riggers' Review

Would the real Stew/Mel please stand up, please stand up, please stand up. Life is a rollercoaster again at the moment. Make us play on the green, green grass of home and we look pretty good. Take us out of our comfort zone and what we know best, then there may be trouble ahead. Yesterday saw a disappointing end to a year that started so brightly, which has been punctuated with displays of sheer class, but has also seen displays as dimly lit as parts of the Murrayfield pitch yesterday afternoon.

Quite how Murrayfield are sitting second bottom of the league when they are capable of playing like that is a question only they can answer. Certainly, if they play like that in their remaining games, they should Edge themselves clear of trouble. They dominated the set piece and destroyed our lineout. We never got any go forward as we couldn’t breach their defence and, no matter how much we huffed and we puffed, we just weren’t at the races. To use a festive analogy, we seemed happy to play the game at the pace of Cliff Richard’s 'Mistletoe And Wine'. We needed, however, to play at the pace of Brenda Lee’s 'Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree'. A big difference, I’m sure you’ll agree.

When Stephan crashed over in injury time to secure us a losing bonus point, it allowed us to leave with a little dignity. Not much, I grant you, but just enough. Yesterday, when we on the touchline were looking out for a hero or two, we were sadly disappointed. I’m pretty sure that only Ross Rennie and Sam Hendry will be anywhere close to being satisfied with their performances. That is just not good enough and, hopefully, some of the festive break will be used by the players to have a good think about what they want to achieve this season.

Another of my useless stats for you – the last time we won our last league game before Christmas was 15/12/2001 against Berwick at Inverleith. We’ve then always gone on to win our first game after the year. Let’s hope that pattern continues. And what would we give for a repeat of January 2004. The Gambler in me wouldn’t bet against it!

So where do we go from here? Well our promotion hopes are still alive and kicking. As Old Blue Eyes nearly sang, ‘it’s up to you, Stew/Mel, Stew/Mel.’ A two week break from competitive action, hopefully the boys will be able to recharge their batteries. Hopefully Gareth, Nick, Alex, Lindy, Jed, Shaun, Euan, Dalgy and a few others can come back into the reckoning, give us some impetus and let Inverleith be drowned out by the sounds of 'Summer Suns Are Glowing' come March 25th, 2005.

All that is left for me to do is to wish you a Merry Christmas and a very prosperous 2005 and thank you for all your support over 2004. It is much appreciated.

Riggers

(Many thanks to you for all your hard work for the Club in 2004, both beside the pitch and behind the keyboard, Gordon - Bill)

Stew Mel Stats

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