Colin Shaw weighed in with five tries as Glasgow Hawks took the BT Premiership Division 1 title in style at Mansfield Park this afternoon.

The jubilant Hawks players received the silverware from SRU President Gordon Dixon and BT representative Alan Bonas.

Hawks’ 80-19 victory over Hawick thus ensured their second successive championship – a fitting farewell to coach Peter Wright whose full-time coaching duties now have him guiding the Scotland under-19 team.

With three games still to be played Hawks, now sitting on 84 points, could yet surpass the 90 points with which they took the honours last season.

Hawks, who led 45-7 at the break this afternoon, scored 12 tries in total. Their others came from Murray Strang (2), Mike Adamson (2), Richard Maxton, Steve Duffy and Kenny Sinclair. Strang landed ten conversions. Hawick’s tries came from Cameron Bruce, Keith Hedley and Ross Armstrong.

Hawks defend Premier crown




By Alasdair Reid



Glasgow Hawks produced a riot of attacking rugby at Mansfield Park yesterday to collect their second successive BT Premier-ship title with a stunning 80-19 victory over Hawick. In an afternoon of humiliation for Hawick, they conceded 12 tries , losing by a margin believed to be the highest in their 132-year history.
For the Hawks, however, Hawick’s juniors by 124 years, it was a day of unrestrained glee, its only downside being the fact that Peter Wright, the former Scotland and British Isles prop who has coached them for the past two seasons, was not there to see it. Wright is currently in South Africa with the Scotland Under-19 side at the World Junior Championships, but he is understood to have kept in touch with events at Mansfield Park by telephone.

The star of the show was winger Colin Shaw, who collected five of their tries. Shaw is one of three Hawks players who will leave at the end of the season to join the Glasgow professional side, for whom they have made regular stand-in appearances recently, and he admitted that there was a poignant dimension to a day that represented the end of an era for the three players.

“I’ve made a lot of good friends here, so it was nice to be able to produce a performance like that,” said Shaw. “We still have three league games left, but I don’t know if I’ll be involved because of my other commitments. We have an outstanding bunch of players here and they really deserve this success. To be honest, I thought we were outstanding today.”

Brian Simmers, the former Scotland fly-half who founded the Hawks eight years ago by amalgamating the first-team squads of Glasgow Accies and GHK, also praised the team’s display: “It was a fantastic performance,” Simmers said. “We had a very strong side with our three lads back from the Glasgow pro side. They’re very strong when they’re all playing, and it was good to see them together for this game.”

However, Simmers, who has been a persistent critic of the SRU’s strategies for prof essional rugby in recent years, repeated his call for Scottish clubs to be allowed to compete on the European stage. “That would be the icing on the cake,” he said. “If the Premier clubs could get into the lowest of the European tournaments then the impact on Scottish rugby would be enormous. It would put a fantastic buzz back into the club game and it would be a terrific preparation for the pro sides.”

Simmers also paid tribute to the work done by the coach: “I was particularly pleased for Peter Wright,” he said. “He’s made a huge difference to the Hawks, adding real steel to the side, and it’s just a shame that he wasn’t here to see it.”

However Kevin Barrie, the Hawick coach who is believed to be leaving the club at the end of the season, took a different view of yesterday’s game. “That was thoroughly embarrassing,” said Barrie. “I don’t know how the players felt about it, but I felt ashamed.”

This article was originally posted on 2-Apr-2005, 22:41 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 3-Apr-2005, 08:42.