Melrose 3rd XV vs Stew Mel 3rd XV, 13/1/07

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville team for Saturday's game with Melrose at the Greenyards, kick off 2 pm, is:

The bus leaves Inverleith at 11.45 am - please be on time.

Our first game of the year sees a large squad which includes three new players from the dozen or so recruited during New Player Week. We welcome them all, and, hopefully, they can help us come back up the road with some points.

Let's start 2007 with a good win and a good road trip.

Match Report

Much talk of 'having a dry January' and 'taking the car so I don't have to drink' had left numbers depleted at Inverleith, with just 11 brave soldiers shuffling around the clubhouse waiting for the get-go. Olly Main and Barry Foster surprised all by pitching up in shirt and tie, whilst Dougie Rycroft failed to pitch up at all.

The finger pointing began. 'Don't worry - we've got 17 players' came the earnest reply from the management team. The riposte was lightning quick: "Yes, but at least 11 of them are s***e!" Touché!

Never mind, Black Al had done us proud on the team bus front:

Our only worry being getting off the bus at the other end as the good people of Melrose stared, boggle-eyed and disbelieving, thinking 'How could Frank Hadden's squad let themselves go so badly?!'

Topics of chat on the bus revolved around compiling various past and present Stew/Mel XVs, Ric Clark's offensive salami sandwich and even more offensive 'Glasgow Herald' combo and trying to work out whether we were looking at a field or a river from our A7 vantage point. Tom then shattered the calm by claiming that he once knew a guy who looked like 'a midget-to-scale' or 'a giant dwarf'. Much talk of his potential merits in the scrum followed.

After getting changed and taking a rigorous warm-up which consisted of a half mile trek across fields, stone dykes and fences in the gloom, we finally took to the field. With horizontal rain and wind in our faces, we endured an early onslaught from Melrose which had them 17-0 up within the first half hour. The arrival by car of Marsh, Junior and Dukey and a tyrannical first half performance by Belly Keith (matched only by his Domino performance later) brought us back into things, and, by half time, we were more than coping with Melrose and the match conditions.

From the referee's whistle to start the second half, we never looked back. Relentless pressure told early on, and a neat bit of handling by Scotty Bowman put debutant Darren Hoyland through a gap and under the posts. Shaft converted and we were on our way.

The next score took an age to come. After we had camped on the Melrose line for the best part of 15 minutes, Dukebox finally smashed through, only to be told (wrongly) he had been held up. We were quickly back in a scoring position, though, and finally Jeremy Smith (son of Jonathan) wriggled his way through to get our second. Shaft again did the honours and Melrose were starting to buckle. They called for reinforcements and, lo and behold, what was this? A giant blond dwarf came trundling onto the pitch and took his place in the front row. Whilst looking resplendent in white boots and a snakeskin scrum cap, he proved no match for a Mighty Threes pack with the bit between their few remaining teeth.

The final and match winning score came courtesy of one of those unstoppable Barry Foster charges that were a regular feature of our championship last season. A classic Baz base of the scrum pick and straight line charge to their posts from outside the twenty two was a euphoric sight. The fact that he had an average of 2.3 Melrose players attached to him at any given time during his run made the score all the more remarkable. Shaft took his kick well to take the score to 21-17, and the game was ours.

The celebrations started in the Ned Haig lounge as Marsh threw off the shackles of his 'dry January' and got stuck into the jugs like a good lad. Negotiations ensued with the bus driver, and it was off to Scotty Bowman's fine boozer, the Abbotsford Arms in Galashiels. Waiting for us was our own lounge, a food buffet and a fine selection of cheesy tunes for Shaft to revel in. All seemed to be going well until the driver hit us with a bombshell: no booze on the bus.

With only an hour and a bit of drinking time left, immediate action was called for, and a strike team of Stew Forsyth, Belly Keith and Geoff Coyle took charge of the drinking games. At one point there were four different games running at the same time, and an endless supply of lager and cider being downed. Olly Main did a grand job of marshalling the money and keeping the rounds going before he temporarily 'took ill' and had to be replaced.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the storm was over. Before things had a chance to get too out of hand, the bus driver had intervened, and it was time to go. There was still time, however, to thank Scotty and staff and give the barmaid her £5 Halfords voucher tip before sneaking onto the bus with poorly concealed bottles of sloe gin and port.

A dark and drowsy bus trip up the road, with much singing and swigging of contraband booze, saw us back home to Edinburgh with an excellent win and another epic Melrose road trip under our belts. Job done.

Brodie Smithers

Stew Mel Stats

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