Stew Mel vs West Of Scotland FC, 15/11/03

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Squad

The Stewart's Melville FP RFC team to play West Of Scotland at Inverleith on Saturday, kick off 2 pm, is:

Only one change from last week's squad, with Jed Gordon coming onto the bench for his first taste of 1st XV league rugby. He replaces Sam Hendry, who hasn't recovered from the knock he received early in the Jed match. Nick Wood, who impressed whilst at 15 last week, retains the starting full back role.

Up front, Malky MacColl has recovered from the bug that floored him towards the end of last week and resumes as the starting hooker from Alex Edmonstone, who drops down to the bench.

Our injury position continues to ease, with Mike Elliott, Andrew Fraser and Graeme Lind all starting for the 2nd XV this week - bodes well for the second half of the season.

Riggers' Review

Well, it was a win, at the end of the day, and that is what mattered. We never really got going against a competitive West of Scotland side who, in the last couple of weeks, have started to believe in themselves a bit more. A first win won't be far away for them if they keep up this form and, indeed, if they'd had a wee bit more composure at crucial times on Saturday, it could have been win number one for them. However, they didn't, and we did, and we come away from the game having played poorly and won. If we'd done that a few more times this season we might be closer to the league leaders. The fact we aren't highlights one of the main problems that we have: lack of consistency.

We seem, at the moment, to be either very good or pretty poor. There is no middle ground and that is what we are going to have to find over the next three months - the ability to grind things out when the going gets tough. The pitches are going to get softer and heavier and the ball will be wetter. We must make the best of what we have when it comes along. I think we have the personnel to do so. We can certainly score tries - 44 in twelve games to date is not a bad return. We must, however, up our workrate in defence and become a team that can consistently keep clean sheets.

We also play better when we generate pace on the game. The fact we couldn't do that on Saturday was a problem. We did it on a few occasions and looked good, however the ball we were getting from tackle situations was slow and scrappy, if we got it at all. Did you know there are 41 different infringements that you can be penalised for at the tackle situation? I don't think the referee knew that, or even any of them, as he opted out of refereeing this element of the game. That made taking the ball into contact a lottery and, if players got isolated or went to deck too early, then West had the opportunity to slow the game down, which worked well in their favour.

We now move on to the next round of the Cup and, if a local derby against Accies can't get the boys fired up, then not much will. A place in the last sixteen of the Cup beckons for the winners and, being currently 16th in league positions across the top two divisions, this should be the least that we are looking to achieve. It won't, however, just happen. The team will have to fight and scrap every single bit of the way against Accies on Saturday. Knowing Barney, he'll have them fired up and be looking for them to win the battle up front. Accies got back to winning ways on Saturday after a couple of slip ups and I'm pretty sure this is going to be a hell of a battle down at Raeburn Place. It would be great to have a big support cheering us on, just like we had that day earlier this year at Inverleith.

It's a 1.30 pm kick off, so what better way to finish off the day of the World Cup final than to trek down to Stockbridge to watch two old rivals stand toe to toe and slug it out for a place in the next round of the Cup. I look forward to seeing you there!

Riggers

Stew Mel Stats

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