THE HERALD REPORTS

’Muir no more than efficient as Hawks are put to swordNEIL DRYSDALE September 15 2008
Good grief, how the mighty are fallen. As the sky collapsed on Glasgow Hawks' challenge, it was almost impossible to recollect the fashion in which they used to dominate Scottish club rugby, especially towards the end, when Boroughmuir started running in tries with the sort of gay abandon worthy of Freddie Mercury.

By the death, the reigning title-holders in the Scottish Hydro Electric Championship racked up all of 11 touchdowns, with braces from Tom Bury, Malcolm Clapperton and the ubiquitous Angus Martyn, and some of the Glaswegians' defence in that final 20 minutes was as feeble as Scottish Labour's response to their current problems. (By the way, if you change a couple of verbs in the new Labour team, we are being asked to support the Grey-Lament team, which says everything that needs to be said about the state of the Keir Hardie set.) At the outset, this looked like a seriously engrossing contest, but in the final 20 minutes, it was embarrassingly easy for the Meggetland personnel. For a brief spell, they were in arrears, after Mike Rainey had kicked the visitors in front, but despite proving some temporary resistance, Hawks simply had no answer to the threat posed by their inter-city rivals, and the saddest part of the contest was that Boroughmuir were hardly spinning the ball around with the dexterity of the Harlem Globetrotters. Instead, they were efficient, if a little out of sorts, in their initial exchanges as they attempted to orchestrate sustained momentum, but, eventually, they proved capable of ripping the Hawks' rearguard to shreds.

Incidentally, it was significant that the victorious captain, Fergus Pringle, wasn't exactly dancing through hoops at the denouement. Instead, the impressively energetic lock couldn't have cared less about the mad whirl of tries for his side in the last quarter, where they came close to humiliating a club which have won a crop of national trophies during the last decade.


"We were happy with the win, but the score is less important to us than the performance. I think we had to build our innings and get the basics right, but our set-piece was a lot better than it had been in our previous game where they had lost to Currie at Malleny Park," said Pringle, who enjoyed an outstanding afternoon, yet appreciates that this campaign is not going to be the cakewalk to triumph which summed up last season's stroll.

"It might sound obvious, but we can't afford to dash out, all guns blazing, without laying the platform, and we did what we needed to do today.

"Basically, we know this is going to be a very tough defence of our title. Look at the history. It is very rare that somebody wins eight or nine games in a row, as we did last time around, and we know that everybody is gunning for us, wherever we go. So, we have to be totally focused on what is happening on the pitch.

"I reckon the real character tests will come in the away matches, where we have to cling to the basics, but we have laid down a marker today, we were very focused, and we must build on that."

Hawks, in contrast, were a shambles, as they slumped to their third successive loss, and the fashion in which they conceded more than 50 points in the second half, suggests that they will have to battle relegation for the remainder of the campaign.

It was bad enough that they seemed to surrender after being biffed with a double whammy of tries in first-half injury time - from Ed Mills and Bury - but they also lacked ideas or inspiration and it was actually quite sad to behold the manner in which they capitulated during the last thrusts of the contest, withMartyn and Clapperton running riot.

It isn't as if they can recruit a crop of new match-winners. On the contrary, their old engine room has either retired or joined the pro ranks, while such stalwarts as Ally Maclay and Ricky Munday are otherwise engaged in preparing to climb Kiliminjaro next month.

Sadly, the search for self-preservation may be equally tough for Hawks.

This article was posted on 15-Sep-2008, 07:17 by Hugh Barrow.