SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS

Shimlas bask in the heat
By Alisdair Reid
Local sides put in the shade as South African visitors make up for faltering last year
Comment
INSPIRATION ON the pitch - and no shortage of perspiration around the ground either. The Melrose Sevens tournament is the closest thing the Borders has to a rite of spring, but Melrose's achingly picture-perfect ground was not so much basking as baking beneath a fierce sun throughout yesterday afternoon.

Just the conditions, you might say, for the Shimlas, those veldt-hardened boys of South Africa's Orange Free State University.

The Shimlas had looked to have last year's event in the bag until they ran out of steam in the latter part of the tournament and were bundled out at the semi-final stagebutthere was to be no repeat of that error yesterday as they conserved their energies superbly and took the Melrose title with an emphatic 17-10 victory over the Newcastle Falcons in the final.

advertisementYou would have felt for the Falcons as they had class and gas in abundance, but were not exactly overloaded with organisational skills.

Brought together at short notice, relying heavily on academy and student players, they coasted through the early rounds impressively well but foundered on the rock of the Shimlas' fierce tackling at the death.

Some in the crowd may have been slow to warm to the Shimlas, for there was nothing particularly silky in their harsh and pragmatic style of play. They clattered their opponents with something like menace, and some of the Falcons players will be nursing bruised bodies this morning. Yet the Melrose crowd still hailed them with an ovation at the finish, for their victory was nothing less than thoroughly well deserved.

It was secured towards the end of a tense final with a piece of South African brilliance. Guarding a 12-10 advantage, the boys from Bloemfontein worked a cautious attack down the left side before opening with pace across the middle of the pitch. From there, Kenny Von Wiellich launched a gloriously well-weighted crossfield kick, which duly dropped into the arms of the gloriously well-named Shagan Windvogel. The grateful recipient floored the throttle and motored over from 30 yards out.

The Shimlas had opened the scoring with a try by Nicholas Jackson at the conclusion of the final's edgy opening phase, but it was quickly annulled by a matching try from Newcastle's James Hamer. Territorially, the final hung in the balance almost to the end, but the Shimlas extra edge in the contact areas always made them favourites. Von Wiellich scored their second try, soon matched by another for Newcastle by Lewis Boyd, but the decisive flash of genius was soon to settle the tie.

Scottish interest in the tournament had evaporated at the semi-final stage when Watsonians, the last remaining home side in the event, were cleaned out 19-0 by the eventual victors. In truth, the possibility of a Scottish team getting even that far had looked unlikely from the very earliest stages when the gulf between the domestic teams and the guest of the Scots until they were beaten 24-5 by Newcastle at the quarter-final stage, but Watsonians had been favoured with a far easier draw.

With questions surrounding Borders rugby as a whole at the moment, it was also worrying to see so little fight in any of the local sides. Remarkably, Selkirk seemed the most impressive of the Borderers, their challenge surviving until the quarters and a 31-17 defeat by Watsonians. Most of their near-neighbours had tumbled out in the earlier rounds.

Yet you would miss the point by a distance to think of the Melrose Sevens as a rugby occasion onto which a social event has been tagged, for the true order of things is actually the reverse. The odd sporting purist might object to that sense of priorities, but in the closing stages of a long and often grim season there is surely no harm in a little hedonism. Granted, it had a distinctly Bacchanalian dimension if the number of tanked up lads around the ground - and in the interest of gender fairness, we should acknowledge the tanked up lasses as well - but a wonderful atmosphere prevailed from start to finish.

All things considered, though, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the tournament was the fact that no SRU officials of any note chose to attend. Melrose sources confirmed that invitations had been issued to a number of senior Murrayfield figures, and in the present climates it was staggering that not one could grace the event with his presence.

Perhaps they had better things to do than turn up at the most successful occasion on the Scottish domestic calendar, staged at a venue that is renowned around the rugby world, but their non-attendance was being interpreted as a grievous insult by many at the club.

As if the need to build bridges in the Borders was not compelling enough, the fact the SRU will be staging a sevens tournament of their own in less than two months time made the strange case of the missing mandarins all the more difficult to comprehend. It is hard enough to find exemplars of excellence in Scottish rugby at the moment, so treating one as obvious as this with such disdain is baffling. If Melrose were to up sticks and move their celebrated event to the southern hemisphere, you half suspect that half the SRU staff would suddenly turn up on a fact-finding mission.

With the Greenyards packed to the gunwales, and with the sport not exactly abuzz with anticipation ahead of the SRU's own Murrayfield tournament in June, there was surely much to be learned in the little Borders town yesterday afternoon. More than 3,000 supporters had turned up at Netherdale to make a point the previous evening, so it was not exactly unreasonable to expect a handful of SRU figures to pitch up at the Greenyards as well.

First round: Ayr 12 Boroughmuir 7; Currie 7 Glasgow Hawks 29; Hawick 45 Langholm 14; Watsonians 26 Peebles 12.

Second round: Edinburgh Accies 14 Ayr 19; Melrose 5 Oxford University 33; Dundee 7 Glasgow Hawks 39; Aberdeen 0 Newcastle 35; Gala 17 Hawick 10; Heriots 12 Shimlas 17; Kelso 24 Watsonians 29; Selkirk 14 Jed-Forest 7.

Quarter-finals: Ayr 19 Oxford University 33; Glasgow hawks 5 Newcastle 24; Gala 0 Shimlas 42; Watsonians Semi-finals: Oxford University 12 Newcastle 26; Shimlas 19 Watsonians 0.

Final: Newcastle 10 Shimlas 17.

IAIN MORRISON IN SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY REPORTS
Hawks offered the best chance for local glory as the Glasgow team looked the part in the early rounds brushing aside Premier One winners Currie by 29-7, and chalking up 39 points against Dundee in another one-sided encounter.

Hawks then gave the crowd something to cheer about when they scored first against the Falcons developement side thanks to Steven Duffy, but former Merchiston Castle shoolboy Cameron Johnston showed everyone a clean pair of heels to grab a half-time lead for the Guinness Premiership club. A little later Sandy Warnock dropped a ball on the Falcons line and the visitors picked up to score the decisive try at the opposite end of the stadium

This article was originally posted on 15-Apr-2007, 07:25 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 15-Apr-2007, 07:35.