Musselburgh vs Stew Mel, 10/11/07

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team to play Musselburgh RFC at Stoneyhill on Saturday, kick off 2 pm, is:

A largely unchanged squad for our first trip to Musselburgh since September 2002, although Kev Stuart and Craig Joiner drop out due to being, respectively, unavailable and injured.

After putting in some good performances for the 2nd XV recently, Ally replaces Kev in the front row, while Cedric replaces Jackie in the centre. Stu Ker also switches to scrum half this week, with Park Eh replacing him on the wing and Rob dropping to the bench.

Also warming the woodwork on Saturday is none other than Alex Edmonstone, returning to the 1st XV squad for the first time since we played Currie in December 2005 (thanks, Gordo!) It's great to see Ek back with us after nearly three years out due to injury.

We are running a bus through to Musselburgh for the game. Anyone wishing a lift should assemble at Inverleith by 11.45 am on Saturday, for a noon departure. If you're driving to Stoneyhill, directions are here.

Musselburgh aren't having the best of seasons so far, but we know from bitter experience that they are always a handful on their home turf. For that reason, we are taking nothing for granted going into this game, and would love to see as many fans in attendance as there were in Haddington last week.

Ben's Briefing

The team travelled to Musselburgh on what must have been the shortest bus trip ever known to man or Mel (entries to Bill if you can supply a competitor) with the unbeaten streak riding at 6. The match perhaps represented a different sort of test to the one that had faced the team the previous week at Haddington, and Stew Mel probably never got out of 3rd gear this week as a result. Musselburgh have had a torrid time on their return to Premier 2 but were never likely to surrender without a fight - and fight they did, opening the scoring after a period of possession from the kick off which led to a 3-0 lead.

The early signs weren't good for Stew Mel, with good possession being needlessly squandered by poor decision making and trying to find passes that were simply not there. None the less, Jimmy Moran put us level with a relatively straightforward penalty after Musselburgh were pinged for offside. Rather than settle, however, the nervous errors continued, and a seemingly innocuous kick was allowed to bounce inside our 22, resulting in a scrum conceded on the five yard line. Initially it appeared as though Musselburgh had let us off the hook as the ball squirted out of the back of the scrum, but the 'Burgh nine gathered the loose ball well and combined to put their eight away in the corner. If the feeling hadn't been there before that we weren't really at the races, it was certainly there now: 8-3 down, and the Stew Mel faithful were exchanging glum looks.

From the restart we pressurised Musselburgh back into their own 22, although unforced errors still punctuated our game and it was proving difficult to build up any momentum. Fortunately, Musselburgh's indiscipline at the ruck led to a series of penalties which Moran kicked towards the corner. From one of the resulting lineouts, Stuart Ker broke loose and was halted just short of the try line. The ball then seemed to resemble a bar of soap for both sides as neither could hang on to it. Borth finally put an end to this, gathering up yet another spilled ball and squirming over near the posts to restore parity. Moran added the extras for a 2 point lead.

There followed the first of two real moments of quality in the game. Musselburgh restarted and, a few minutes later, an exquisitely timed pass from Marsh to Borth allowed the latter to carve through the Musselburgh midfield on the half way line, before drawing the fullback and putting Moran in under the posts.

Following this, the match went rapidly downhill from a neutral point of view. This was never really a dirty match, yet somehow the referee managed to lose control, as his almost continuous whistling began to frustrate both sides. This led to the inevitable boil over and a yellow card for each side, with Dalgleish being the Lion to receive his marching orders. We weren't done yet, though - not by any means - as, two minutes later, a second Musselburgh player was handed 10 minutes in the cooler, apparently for a punch. The half closed with some fairly mediocre fare from both sides and certainly Stew Mel deserved the 'flea in the ear' half time talk delivered by Macca.

The second half saw the second quality moment of the game. It was just a shame that it occurred in the 41st minute and left the Stew Mel faithful with 39 more minutes of scrappy, soulless rugby to endure. Take nothing away from Donny, however: as he rampaged into the Musselburgh 22, selling dummies and then turning on the afterburners again, you almost thought he was going to score himself, but, as the defence closed in, he provided what most second rows (including yours truly at the moment) can only dream about - a reverse flip pass from the back of his hand which Cedric duly touched down under the posts.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh in calling the remainder of the game soulless, as Marsh then provided us with the bonus point shortly afterwards when the Musselburgh defence were unable to cope with his pace after we had at long last strung a few phases together. But the overriding feeling pervading the bench was that we hadn't really turned up to do the job in front of us, which was to beat a side low on confidence in a manner which showed a bit of the discipline and professionalism which had taken us from the foot of the table after 4 games to within touching distance of the leaders after 10.

If you are going to have a performance like that, then it's better to do it against the weaker opponents (no disrespect to Musselburgh), the cynics would say, - and they'd be right, but there is still no excuse for a performance such as this when we all know (and I include the players in this) that we are capable of better. The skill is most certainly there, but we must execute collective discipline as a team to maintain our surge up the table.

That said, a win is a win, and five points is what we came for and five points is what we got. The scoring was rounded off by Eck on his return to the 1st XV. He was also deservedly named as Leading Lion for a performance of quiet competence in the scrum and some graft round the park. Not that this writer is biased towards forwards, but a mention should also go to Donny and Dalgy, who got through 23 tackles between them in the boiler house - which is a good shift in the loose in any 'hoose'.

Ben

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