2’s versus Stew/Mels


A bright, sunny day at New Anniesland (a bit different from last week!) saw the Mighty 2’s embark on a game against Stewarts Melville FP without the legend that is captain Kenny Baillie. Dereliction of duty? Lack of commitment ? Well if you consider the sacrifices KB’s made over the last 2 seasons, it would be criminal to criticise him for missing a game…… just as well the result ended the right way!!


Changes a plenty – well it is 2nd XV rugby – from last week with a return for Sack after 2 weeks on Salisbury Plain and for Willie Wong. Sad to say, both these good young prospects, who have come on by leaps and bounds in the last 2 seasons, will be off for pastures new at the end of the season. Sack to become an officer in the Army (God – and Prince Harry – help us!) and Willie to take up a new job in London. Our best wishes go to both of them.


Alan Perrie was persuaded by Hugh Barrow to put in an appearance and this coupled with a re-appearance by Scottie Inglis lent a solid appearance to the front row. Mike Whiteford made only his 5th appearance of the season and Steven (Chippy) O’Donnell brought an added touch of sanity to the backs, replacing as he did Stewart Smith.


A phone call from Mattie Smith at noon proved to be a genuine call off this week and Gemma was replaced at the last minute by Michael (sorry forgotten 2nd name!) who, coming from Donegal, found himself having some craic with Ciaran Fitzgerald on the touchline. Indeed it was an impressive touchline with McD, Murray Wiseman and Robbie Alexander all joining Ciaran – an illustration of the quality player that has spent so much time on the injury list this season.


As 14 tries were eventually scored, I won’t attempt to describe them all. Ten were scored by backs (not counting Oatey’s 2 from open side!) and of these 8 were scored by Rory love and Stu Dunk with 5 and 3 respectively. That kind of gives you an idea of the game plan we had, win tidy ball, offload as often as possible with big forwards making dents in behind the opposition and let the pace and handling skills of the backs do the rest. The front row provided plenty of ball with clever rotation of the props, The 2nd rows and Rory Hamilton made huge inroads with well angled runs, the wing forwards linked well with the halves and the midfield timed passes to perfection.


Leading 34-0 at half time, a devastating first 15 minutes of the 2nd half saw 6 more tries scored, at which time a plucky Stew/Mel’s side scored their only try which could well have been considered the score of the game.


Mention must be made of the goalkicking. A 25% success rate for the 1st 8 kicks was woeful and that included the worst successful conversion I’ve ever witnessed from Chris Breckenridge. Thankfully Franco announced that Chippy was a more than adequate kicker and thereafter he slotted kicks from all angles.


Final score Hawks 84 Stewarts Melville 5



Statistics up to 24/3/07


As of yesterday 110 tries have been scored, 58 converted successfully, and 8 penalties put over.


Kenny Baillie is top scorer with 4 tries, 48 conversions and 7 penalties giving him 137 points.


Rory Love has 16 tries, Stu Dunk 11 tries and Sean Murray 9.


Chris Lyall, Stu Pollock and Davy Stewart have played 17 games each.


62 players have been used, 20 have only played 1 game and 14 have played more than 10 games.

This article was posted on 25-Mar-2007, 20:04 by Hugh Barrow.