THE HERALD REPORTS


KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer November 22 2008
A victory and the best crowd of the season at Old Anniesland richly rewarded Glasgow Hawks for their enterprise last night as they cranked up their bid to avoid relegation from Scottish Hydro Electric Premiership Division One.

They saw an opportunity with the way the fixtures had fallen, giving them a derby on an international weekend, and marketed this floodlit match well. Some 700 attended to see the hard-fought victory, more than double what could be expected on an ordinary Saturday afternoon.

Having suffered the ignominy of losing heavily to their newly promoted neighbours in the opening match of the season, Hawks began purposefully but were unable to turn territorial superiority into points. As so often happens, having failed to do so they were made to pay.


The opening score was the result of a well-conceived and executed blindside move as Ben Davis picked up at a scrum, Colin Duck provided the link then Peter Horne released Andrew Park on the right. The winger made good ground as he cut infield before squeezing the return out of the tackle to put his full-back in for a try converted by Conor Davis.

That long-range score looked as if it might be followed by another when Richie Gray, the Glasgow Warriors academy lock, blasted his way through the midfield on his own 10-metre line and powered down the left, holding off defenders and delivering what could have been a scoring pass if Horne had been able to take it.

Instead the equalising score came from nothing when Davis had an attempted clearance charged down by opposite number Noble, who seized gratefully upon the rebound to go in close to the posts.

Davis's involvement ended soon after when he had to be helped from the field after being brought down in a dubious- looking challenge by Craig Gossman. Shortly after that Noble knocked over a penalty to put his side ahead; however, he missed with another straightforward opportunity just before the break.

Eight minutes into the second half, Hawks were reduced to 14 men when Rory Hamilton was sin-binned for killing the ball under his own posts and Horne took over the kicking duties to level the scores with the resultant penalty.

West were unable to produce any further scoring while they had the extra man, but with Rory Kerr coming more into the game, having switched to full-back, there had been a momentum shift. Horne took time to adjust to the stand-off's role, but he broke the deadlock early in the final quarter, breaking free on the left and showing a good turn of pace to get close enough to the line to be able to stretch his way out of a last-ditch tackle and dot the ball down.

That sparked a renewed effort from Hawks and as they pressed it was West prop Elliott McLaren's turn to incur the referee's wrath for killing the ball close to his own line. Hawks opted for the scrum, but they could not press home their advantage.

The pressure was maintained and after another series of scrums failed to produce a pushover score it was their backs who found the way through, albeit there was a suggestion of a double movement as Gossman reached for the line when tackled just short.

The score came out wide and with only a couple of minutes left on the clock, a draw looked the likeliest outcome, but Mike Rainey struck his conversion attempt to put his side ahead and sealed the win with a penalty deep into injury time.

This article was posted on 22-Nov-2008, 00:13 by Hugh Barrow.