Barnes ready with secret plan to clip Hawks’ wings
Lewis Stuart
Wily as ever, Ian Barnes, the Edinburgh Academicals coach, has a secret plan for heading into the club’s 150th anniversary season with the Scottish Cup nestled securely in the trophy cabinet.

After lots of talk about the side’s one-dimensional, stuff-it-up-your-jumper approach, he believes it is the back division that can clinch the title against Glasgow Hawks today.

“Of course, it all starts in the forwards,” he says. “It always does. We have to take them on up front. The Hawks are a very good side if you let them play, so the idea is not to let them play, always be up in their faces. We have to be on the front foot and take our chances, but we also have to play it as we see it, and we have some pretty good backs too.”

The fate of the Accies is an object lesson for all clubs. Deep in debt five years ago and on the brink of heading out of the Premiership altogether, they have pulled themselves together and now, not only are they in today’s cup final but they also won promotion back to the top division for next season’s celebrations.

Bringing in Barnes, had a lot to do with the playing success. After winning titles galore as a player and coach with Hawick, he has a nononsense approach that works as long as the players are prepared to put in the work. The other side has been the links with two lower-division clubs, Broughton and Trinity, both of them based around local Edinburgh state schools and both providing a string of players to the club and playing a large part in the fact that the Accies have taken up their entire allocation of 4,000 tickets for today’s game – the kind of enthusiasm that in the past has only happened when a Borders club has been involved.

Up against them is another club that sits at the peak of a local grouping, with Glasgow Hawks feeding from the Glasgow Academicals and GHK clubs that share use of the Anniesland facilities.

Last season’s league champions, who put their early-season problems behind them to surge through the second half of the season, the Hawks go into the game as favourites, though David Wilson, the coach, had laid it on the line to his forwards that if they do not stand up to the Edinburgh pack, they will be hammered.

If they can match the Accies for possession, then the likes of Michael Adamson, in the current Scotland sevens squad, Rory Kerr, a former international wing, and Steven Duffy and Kenny Sinclair, both former professionals with Glasgow, should make sure they capitalise on it.

One key man is Ricky Munday, the centre, who missed the start of the season because he was half way up Khan Tengri, a 7,000-metre mountain in the Tien Shan region of Krygyzstan – he is planning an Everest expedition sometime in the next couple of years. Back at sea level, he knows the team have another peak to climb today, albeit in a more metaphorical sense.

“It is important to get a platform but if we can get that, then we can use the width of the pitch and get it wide. Playing at Murrayfield should be to our benefit. We know that they generally like to keep it tight, so if we can move them around it should play to our strengths.”

It is a message Wilson echoes. “We got something of a wake-up call against West of Scotland in the semi-final,” he said. “The forwards know what is expected of them and I have been able to add some bulk to the front five since then, with players returning from injury. It is better to be forewarned than turn up and be ambushed. We have played plenty of big packs and are capable of undoing them, and I would hope that on Saturday we don’t get dragged into a set-piece dogfight.”

This article was posted on 5-May-2007, 06:58 by Hugh Barrow.