Hawks 2nd XV versus Watsonians

Different opposition, different weather conditions and almost a completely different team. Late call offs on Friday and the unavailability of several players, meant that only 8 of last weeks’ team took the field against Watsonians in the early kick off. Starts were given to Niall Cadell (captain for the day), Ross McDonald, Hodgy, Chris Breckenridge, Rob Holdsworth, Stewart Dunk and Rory Kerr – all quality players but having to find their feet as a team very quickly.
Things did not get off to a good start with McD being penalised, after receiving the kick off, for not releasing. He hardly had time to hit the deck never mind hold on to the ball. One minute played, down 0-3.
Hawks young forwards played their way back into the game and simple ball carries by the back row in particular made inroads into the opposition. The backs were complementing the forwards play and certainly did not look as though they spent most of the warm up introducing themselves to each other. This good play was rewarded when Hodgy strolled in after spotting a gap in the defence to score a fine try which he converted himself. Hawks 7-3 up after 11 minutes.
Despite the visitors having the advantage of both the slope and the wind it was Hawks who were in the ascendancy and the lineout was working well although the scrum was under pressure mainly due to the dubious tactic employed by Watsonians of shoving on the put in and then employing a second shove, which frequently took the scrum past 1.5m – but then maybe the referee was as unaware of this law as he was of others, such as off side in the centres.
A period of sustained pressure and strong lineout drives led to the visitors losing their cool and they were fortunate that their prop was only yellow carded by the ref, after attempting a haymaker on young Richie Gray. Richie was lucky he had the reach advantage for the intent was clearly there to knock him out. Indeed it could be said that the visitors might have gone down to 13 after a further incident but the half ended 7-3 to Hawks.
Although the second half started brightly and Hawks scored through Gav McDonald after another period of pressure, the second half belonged to Watsonians in terms of territory and possession. Maybe it was the inability of Hawks to make replacements that caused the pack to tire but they were certainly unable to kill off the game as they did last week. An unconverted try midway through the half set up an exciting final 10 minutes and a series of rucks led to a try for Watsonians although there was an element of truck and trailer to it.
Hawks had their chances to snatch a victory in the last few minutes but inaccurate information from the ref led some players to believe they were winning by a point and they tried to close the game down instead of pushing for victory. Final score Hawks 12 Watsonians 13.
In truth we probably didn’t deserve to win although it was a game we could have won. The large turnover in players certainly hampered preparations and it is difficult for players, no matter how talented, to gel in such a short period of time. The success of last season was built on a hard core of players who played the bulk of games and when we are back to that scenario we can build on our good start last week. Players returning next week should ensure a strong team going up to Aberdeen.

This article was posted on 3-Sep-2006, 10:35 by Hugh Barrow.