New Anniesland

Saturday 4th march 2006


After a week of frosty nights the remarkable pitch at New Anniesland thawed sufficiently to allow this game to be played in well nigh perfect conditions. Incidentally one of only six played in Scotland on the day.

This was a game of a mature, experienced and heavy Kilmarnock pack against a much younger and lighter set of Accies forwards. The outcome was not dissimilar to the international last week when Scotland’s defence held out heroically against the might of the English. Similarly the whole of the Accies team, including the replacements, tackled as if their lives depended on it. In this regards captain Andy Pogrel was outstanding and if there had been a statistician present counting the number of tackles he made it would have been an impressive number.

For the first twenty minutes Kilmarnock were well on top and kept Accies pinned deep inside their own 22-metre area. Rolling maul after rolling maul were thwarted but few sides would have held out under this pressure and Accies finally yielded when the Kilmarnock No.8 finally crashed over for an unconverted try.

This seemed to spur Accies on and in the second quarter they were the better side. Certainly they were assisted by Kilmarnock indiscipline that resulted in a fairly high penalty count against them that helped Accies to remain in the opposition half despite the strong breeze against them.

With ten minutes of the half remaining Accies scored a well engineered try on the right. Firstly they won a ruck close to the left hand touchline and worked the ball through the hands to Craig Wright, the left-winger, who had cleverly anticipated the move and created extra space to give Mike Hermes room to scorch home. Ali McLaren landed a superb conversion from the right touchline into the breeze to give Accies a7-5 lead.

With five minutes to go to half time Accies were awarded another penalty and Ali McLaren landed the kick from 40 metres.

Half time: Accies 10 Kilmarnock 5

The second half was evenly divided. For the first 20 minutes Accies were well on top and should have made the game safe but too often over eagerness close to the line or poor decision making resulted in moves breaking down. All they had to show for this period of dominance was another magnificent penalty strike by Ali McLaren, this time from 45 metres wide out on the right. The quality of his place kicking and defensive kicking from the base of the scrum justifiably earned him the man of the match award.

The final 20 minutes were dominated by Kilmarnock who like Accies could not capitalise on the pressure as they too made to many errors against an Academical defence that stood firm. Close to the end Kilmarnock did kick a penalty to put them within 6 points of victory but it was not to be.

It certainly was not a classic but at least it was a game when so many others were left twiddling their fingers due to the weather

This article was posted on 5-Mar-2006, 10:14 by Hugh Barrow.