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Mon 28 Mar 2005

Wright has eye on Scotland job

ROBERT SCOTT
AT GOLDENACRE

Heriot’s 13
Glasgow 16 Hawks

Referee: D Changleng.

HAVING coached Glasgow Hawks to within three points of back-to-back BT Premierships, Peter Wright gave notice that he has his sights firmly on coaching the national side - if not just yet.

"I’d love to do it. I’ve always said it. But it will be years to come for me, not months," he said, after seeing Hawks grind out a dogged narrow victory in wintry conditions. "I’ve got an idea what my career path is, mapped out in my head.

"At the moment I’m happy at Hawks and I’m happy to go to South Africa tomorrow to compete in the Under-19 world championship."

It will be fascinating to see how successful Wright will be in communicating his winning mentality to his young charges. The Hawks performance against Heriot’s was a classic example of Wright’s way. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t subtle, and it relied heavily on Hawks’ powerful back row, with Greg Francis outstanding. But in the end it ground down a Heriot’s side who, while they may not have had much more than a mathematical chance of the championship, certainly had a point to make and who played the more expansive rugby - "probably a bit too much rugby, too deep" as Kenny Milne, the club’s director of rugby, conceded afterwards.

The home side certainly took the game to the visitors. They were 13-0 up at one stage and it could easily have been more if the unfortunate winger Marc Teague had not dropped a couple of passes with two and three-man overlaps beckoning outside him. Teague had another chance to win the game late on as well; after some flowing passing from touchline to touchline had given him the space to scorch past his opposite number, he had only Hawks’ make-shift full-back Mike Adamson - he is more accustomed to playing stand-off - to beat. But the Hawks man atoned for his first half error which had led to Heriot’s only try, carefully narrowing the angles before landing a copy-book defensive tackle.

"We are a better side than Hawks" Milne insisted later, despite the evidence of the scoreline, the try-count and the league table. "I’ve said all along, full strength, with the side we can put out, I think we are a better side than Hawks. We don’t have the strength in depth that Hawks have and that’s the difference."

Not much difference, it’s true - especially given the five tries to one trouncing Heriot’s handed out to Hawks in Glasgow earlier in the season. And Heriot’s would almost certainly have drawn the game, probably a fairer result, had they opted to convert a very kickable penalty in the dying moments. Instead, knowing that only a win could keep them the championship alive, they went for the line-out catch and drive, the very tactic that produced Hawks’ first try for Steve Begley in the first half. But the Heriot’s lineout, which had been struggling more and more as the game wore on, let them down, and Hawks were able to secure possession and clear their lines. Errors like that had let down both sides in a contest which was not helped by the wintry conditions, though the weather did not keep away what must have been one of the biggest club crowds of the season, getting on for a thousand people. It’s not often you see the hooker having to cup his hand over his ear to hear the lineout calls over the noise at a club-game.

With such high stakes, there was a nervy edge to the opening quarter in which, while Heriot’s landed two penalties, by far the most entertaining moment was the five-man punch-up led by Begley and Heriot’s hooker Neil Meikle. The referee was able to calm things down with hand shakes all round.

But shortly afterwards, Andrew Olsen slipped through a huge gap in the Hawks defence to put Heriot’s firmly in the driving seat. Only then did the Hawks machine start to rumble, and it became a battle of contrasting weaponry, the rapier of Heriot’s against the bludgeon of Hawks. It was a moment of quick thinking by scrum-half Ian Monaghan, after Heriot’s had given away a penalty defending another drive from a lineout, that put prop Peter Dalton over from close range for their second try.

Hawks crossed the line again in the second half but were held up. And Murray Strang, after a fine break in midfield, would probably have scored as well if scrum half Ian Wilson had not barged him off his own chip ahead, paying the price with ten minutes in the sin-bin and three points from the ensuing penalty. Oddly enough it wasn’t until he was back on the field that Strang notched the next and decisive score, after Jamie Syme was penalised for lying all over the ball at a ruck. The game was far from over and Heriot’s stretched the Hawks defence in all directions to the last. But it was not to be.

Scorers: Heriot’s: Try: Olsen Con: Rutherford, Pens: Rutherford 2. Glasgow Hawks: Try: Begley, Dalton Pens: Strang 2.

Heriot’s: A Wilson; M Teague, N de Luca, A Olsen, C Keenan, G Rutherford, I Wilson; M Welch, N Meikle, G Talac, A McIntosh, J Osbourne, C Harrison, J Syme, P Eccles. Subs used: R Ebdy, S Mustard, I Nimmo.

Glasgow Hawks: M Adamson; S Gordon, A MacLay, S Duffy, W Henry, M Strang, I Monaghan; E Milligan, F Thomson, P Dalton, S Begley, R Maxton, G Francis, M Sitch, N McKenzie. Subs used: S Low, R McKnight, S Forrest.

This article was posted on 28-Mar-2005, 08:35 by Hugh Barrow.