Good evening folks and welcome to Old Anniesland for this SHE Premiership Division 1 game against West of Scotland and a warm welcome to John Beattie and his troops for what I hope is an enthralling local derby this evening.

It has been a sharp learning curve for us in the first half of the season, one which I am sure the players have learned from. If we are being perfectly honest we have made too many basic errors which have really let us down, we know we are better than our league position!

Now that we have played everyone once, there is a feeling in the camp that no team in Premier 1 is that much better than the others so we are confident that we can reverse a lot of the results from the first half of the season starting with this local derby tonight.

This for me is what rugby is about, local rivalry.

I have been fortunate to be involved in lots of derby tussles throughout my career whether it was Lasswade v Dalkeith or Penicuik, or when I was at my first top flight club Boroughmuir playing any of Watsonians, Heriot’s, Stew Mel, Edinburgh Accies and Currie and then latterly in my career with Melrose playing against all the other Border teams and for my final stint in club rugby playing for our close rivals West against teams from the West of Scotland. Great games, great times and most importantly the bragging rights against the losing team.

As a little appetiser, it was good to see Hawks Under 15’s beat West of Scotland Under 15’s (10 – 7) last Sunday with some good play from both teams. Let’s hope we can repeat that feat tonight under the Old Anniesland floodlights.

Peter Wright
Director of Rugby

This article was originally posted on 19-Nov-2008, 18:28 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 20-Nov-2008, 08:08.