Melrose 27 - 22 Hawick: Melrose victorious but fail to shine while Hawick take heart in defeat

ANOTHER frustrating eighty minutes for Melrose and plenty of harsh words spoken during a long team meeting in the changing room afterwards, but with a bonus point win in the bag and their status as the top dogs in Scottish club rugby extended for at least one more week, things could be a lot worse for the Greenyards outfit.

“We’re seven from eight and most teams would be happy with that but we’ve got high standards. If we keep playing like that in the games we’ve got to go against teams likes Edinburgh Accies and Stirling County, who are fighting for survival, we’ll come a cropper,” said John Dalziel, Melrose’s forwards coach, who usually lines up at blindside flanker for the champions but was an exasperated spectator yesterday after breaking his collarbone playing for the South against the Barbarians last Tuesday.

“Hawick deserved the bonus point they got at the end, and with five more minutes they might have stolen it – which would have served us right,” he continued.

“We’ve been killing ourselves these last few weeks trying to do the hard thing before doing the simple thing. We kicked away a lot of ball today when we would normally look to have a go, and we tried far too many silly offloads during periods when we needed to get some control of the game.’

“Hawick’s mind-set now is that they are scrapping for survival so this was always going to be a tough mission, but I still think that if we had played our game we would have won it fairly comfortably. With all due respect to Hawick, we did more damage to ourselves than they did to us.

“When we get to three-four phases we’re a really dangerous side and will score a lot of tries against anybody, but we’re not getting to that point often enough. It’s all positive stuff at training – but the penny has to drop on Saturday. I think we need to go back to basics: start concentrating again on just getting over the game-line and playing the phases.”

For Hawick, this match provided a long awaited glimpse at redemption. They scored three tries and 22 points, which is exactly three tries and 22 points more than they had managed in their previous two outings combined.

Jim Renwick, who has been tutoring the Hawick backline since Derek Armstrong walked the plank four weeks ago, was certainly encouraged by what he witnesses on a glorious autumn afternoon at one of the most picturesque grounds in sport.

“That was a real step forward. We’ve got to be realistic which means getting ready for the play-offs, and it’s important we go into it with a bit of confidence,” he said. “I think we expected to struggle in this one, but with a bit of luck we might have won it – although Melrose had plenty of chances as well. We fought to the end which was pleasing – but we picked up a lot of injuries so we’ll have to see how that pans out.’

It started off ominously for Hawick with Joe Helps squeezing over in the corner within a couple of minutes of kick-off, but Melrose just weren’t sharp enough to fully capitalise on this early advantage. A neat move off the back of the scrum sent Danny Landels into space and created the field position for Lee Armstrong to reduce the gap with an easy penalty.

There were a few flashes of excellence from Melrose, with Jamie Murray the fulcrum for much of the home team’s positive play. It was his midfield bursts which ignited the moves that ended with Andrew Skeen and Garry Elder grabbing tries number two and three for the home team.

Hawick kept on scrapping and frustrating Melrose with some devious play at the breakdown, and despite losing Gary Johnstone to the sin-bin for killing the ball they eventually got their reward when Neil Renwick streaked over.

Helps secured the bonus point for Melrose when he dotted down at the start of the second half, but they still couldn’t shake Hawick off. Kieran Willison intercepted Skeen and romped home from the halfway line, and the champions were forced onto the back foot for most of the last quarter.

The last play of the match witnessed Lindsey Gibson burrowing over to secure the losing bonus point for Hawick – although this is unlikely to count for much in terms of their chances of getting out of the bottom four before the league splits. Nevertheless, the joyous celebrations of the boys in green after scoring told its own story. They still have a mountain to climb, but they now have a foothold – and they look ready to face the challenge head-on

Scorers: Melrose: Tries: Helps 2, Skeen, Elder; Cons: Skeen 2; Pen: Skeen. Hawick: Try: Renwick,Willison, Gibson; Con: Armstrong 2; Pen: Armstrong.

Melrose: F Thomson; C Hardie, J Murray, C Murray (B Dick 50), B Colvine 73); A Skeen, B Colvine (S McCormick 59); C Keen, R Ferguson (A Walker 49), N Beavon (K Cooney 27-40, 56), G Elder, P Eccles (R Ovens 64), R Miller, G Runciman, G Dodds (R Miller 71).

Hawick: N McColm (N MacTaggart 73); S Anderson (C Russell 51), L Armstrong, G Johnstone, S Bouglas; N Renwick (L Gibson 79), G Cottrell; R Sutherland (N Little 40), L Gibson (M Landels 35), S Linton, K Willison (H Scammell 64), K Davies, N MacTaggart (R Sutherland 59), D Landels (R Scott 40), B McNeil.

Referee: J Matthew.