Glasgow Hawks 24-16 Stirling County

Terrific victory, especially after last few encounters have been high scoring narrow defeats!! James Gormley scored cheeky individual try before half time to give us a 10-6 lead. Poor fifteen minutes allowed Stirling to score down blind side and take 16-10 advantage. Great spirit shown by Hawks to take game by the scruff of the neck , cranked up the pressure and scored 2 scintillating tries by Mark Taylor. Great inside ball off a scrum and well constructed team try gave Tails space to scoot in form 30m out. Well deserved win 24-16.



Melrose 21-18 Glasgow Hawks

Considering the work rate and commitment shown by squad this was a travesty of a result. Peculiar refereeing made life difficult and ultimately was significant to the outcome. Hawks started well after long journey , counter attacked from a clearing kick with abrasive run from young Brodie Clark and finished with great hands from Peter Redmayne to allow Scott Rodgers to score in corner. Difficult conv missed by James Gormley. Next 20mins saw Hawks on back foot as penalty count mounted. Melrose kicked 3pts when penalty given for Hawks being offside round fringes, and then similar award and result 10mins later. Both were baffling decisions. These scores were split by a well taken try by Melrose 9 down blind-side. So Hawks found themselves 5-11 down despite looking the more likely team.
Eventually a breakdown penalty came our way before half-time and James kicked it for 8-11 HT. Game was there for the winning but constant struggle with ref decisions made it heavy going . Again called for off-side early in 2nd half , 8-14 . Melrose suffered as well with some decisions and our only penalty of the 2nd half for some breakdown offence allowed James to make it 11-14.
Hawks had dominated for large sections of half and scored try of game when ball moved wide with 2 miss passes to French Tristan who was hauled down short of line. Quick recycle and couple of speculative wide passes from James to Hoggy and Tank gave Davie Paton a nice easy saunter over the line. Conv made it 18-14.
Most of last 20mins played in Melrose territory until rush of blood to head caused turnover and Melrose broke upfield and eventually got ball into wide areas. Hawks thought they had danger covered before winger slipped a tackle and gave a huge forward pass for the full-back to score under the posts. Ref probably couldn't tell it was forward when he was so far behind play !! Conv made final score 21-18.
Tough one to take, huge effort by young squad , lot of miles to travel to lose in such a manner.

This article was posted on 9-Oct-2012, 05:58 by Hugh Barrow.