THE HERALD TODAY

Howe set standard for club rugby
KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer February 23 2009
Late on Saturday, with a party in full swing at the clubhouse on Cupar's Provost Wynd, a text message appeared from an old pal at Howe of Fife.

"Just as well we didn't get chucked out like Cumbernauld etc," it read.

At the end of a week that had brought the single worst decision in SRU championship committee history, the unfairness of ejecting Cumbernauld and St Boswells from the Scottish Cup on the basis of league status could hardly have been more graphically demonstrated.


Howe are three divisions below mighty Hawks, the club with the greatest Scottish Cup pedigree of all.

Nor is that the only reason for empathy between clubs who have to depend on homegrown talent. No Scottish club has been more effective in developing players in recent years than Howe.

On Friday, Fergus Thomson, who learned his rugby in Cupar, was on the Glasgow Warriors bench. Alongside him, getting his first taste of the Magners League, was Peter Horne, man-of-the-match when Scotland's Under-20s shocked Wales earlier this month.

Chris Fusaro, a team-mate of Horne's against Wales, just as he had been when Howe lifted the Scottish Youth League title two years ago as well as helping Cupar's Bell Baxter High become the first state school to lift the Scottish Schools Cup in a decade, is in Edinburgh's squad, having won Scotland sevens caps.

Howe's reward? When defending that Youth League title last year they were summarily thrown out of the tournament, just as Cumbernauld and St Boswells were last week.

The reason was the same too. Lazy, overpaid officials had neither the wit nor imagination to deal with a little bit of fixture congestion.

With many Howe players in among Higher prelims there was no way they could fulfil the SRU's demand at minimal notice that, on a school night, they head down to Hawick for their rearranged tie.

"It was a dreadful kick in the teeth," said Gary Horne, who coached that champion under-18 team of two years ago and is now the club's first-team coach.

"Some of those lads had been the younger ones who went to Murrayfield the previous year and it was a real sickener. Their coach, Russell Ferguson, has had to work really hard to keep some of them involved."

From the side that won those trophies, Michael Fedo and Steve Wilson have, like Horne and Fusaro, moved on. Yet seven of their old under-18 team-mates were involved on Saturday while 10 teenagers were playing for the club's second XV on the adjoining pitch.

Furthemore, a father and son combination is playing together, with Grant and Ralph Henderson propping hooker Josh Fox Clark, and when first-choice goal-kicker Iain Aitken went off, younger brother Ross took over.

No surprise then that Howe played like a team who have an intuitive understanding.

This was genuinely the best team performance I have seen from a Scottish club side in years. They turned Hawks over repeatedly, while instinctive awareness and communication contributed to exceptional inter-linking in the loose as off-loads found team-mates with a consistency the national side can only dream of.

Peter Wright, the Hawks coach, had a case for being upset with the quality of the officiating, but was man enough to admit that had not been the decisive factor in a cracking match.

Chris Mason, yet another of their Under-20s, set the tone commitment-wise with a recklessly brave challenge on Grant Strang at the first kick-off which left the Hawks No.8 requiring treatment but knocked the youngster senseless and unable to take any further part. Howe also coped with being deservedly down to 14 men for a quarter of the match due to a couple of sin-binnings.

Hawks probably could have won by putting more width on the game as they did when releasing winger Johnno Wright for his try early in the first half and when flowing play let Ally Maxwell register their second a minute into the second. Yet by the time John Maclay claimed their third, it was over.

All the aforementioned qualities in Howe's play had contributed to captain Pete Black's try that nudged them ahead before Rory Drummond's interception sparked another magnificent counter-attack which ended in the diagonally opposite corner of the field with Aitken senior touching down.

At the stage where the minnows might have been expected to wilt they instead lifted themselves again and Ross Aitken squirmed out of a tackle to score their third try which, followed by a conversion, then his penalty strike, made the game safe.

What was striking afterwards was that coach Horne's post-match manner was utterly matter of fact . . . that of a man used to winning, as it should be since a run of 40 successive league wins means they will be in the Premiership next season.

For that achievement they received January's SHE Club of the Month Award as the SRU belatedly acknowledged the exceptional work being done at a club that is a shining example of where the sport's priorities should lie.

Truly inspirational, they should be held up as an example of best practice, rather than having to fight the mean-minded at Murrayfield who cannot or will not do their jobs properly.






Howe of Fife 27 Glasgow Hawks 17
Scottish Hydro Electric Cup Round 4
Howe of Fife put three-times former winners Glasgow Hawks out of the Scottish Hydro Electric Cup at Duffus Park today with an inspired performance spiced with invention, intelligence and resolve.
This was a thoroughly well-deserved triumph for the leaders of National League Division One. They may have looked slighter of frame than their Premiership One visitors but their strength and technique at contact left Hawks disgruntled and their offloads in the tackle were an absolute joy.



Hawks made surprisingly little use of the pace at their disposal out wide and looked to this observer as if they expected their hosts to buckle in the face of percussive forward rumble. When Hawks were coming off second best in that particular arm wrestle they ought to have had the wit to adapt.
Instead, it was the confidence with which Howe went about their duties that became the story of the match.
Six of the Howe side were part of the Bell Baxter/Howe of Fife combo that won the Schools and Youth Cup double two seasons ago and even without the likes of openside Chris Fusaro, full-back Peter Horne and flanker Michael Fedo who are making headlines at higher levels, the graduation to the adult game is proving equally relentless.
John Lathangie, part of the Howe coaching team, said the pre-match instructions had been “just to have a real go at them. We just wanted to play our style of game and keep the ball alive.” And what a heart-warming show we got as a consequence.
Howe took the lead through an Iain Aitken penalty, the full-back miscuing his second attempt on the quarter-hour after Hawks’ prop Nick Cox had been sin-binned for persistent team infringement.
Though short-handed, Hawks scored a fine counter-attack try off turnover ball in their own 22, where No 8 Grant Strang – who remained a lone composed figure for Hawks throughout – fed Jonno Wright for the winger to romp in. Stand-off Michael Rainey converted but that was the first and last time that Hawks led.
Just short of the half-hour, Howe replied with some blistering continuity and tackle offload to enable flanker and captain Pete Black to scuttle over. Iain Aitken converted.
The game was coming to the boil now but when Hawks lock Matt Whittleston inexplicably delayed a pass that had simply to go through hands for try to scream out in neon lights, it was Howe who illuminated matters with Rory Drummond’s interception.
It seemed initially that the winger had miscalculated by not pinning his ears back and going for the line. His coolness, however, and some adroit linkage enabled right wing Andrew McLean to dispatch Iain Aitken for Howe’s second try which he converted himself for a half-time advantage of 17-7.
Howe were down to 14 men by the interval when lock Terry Turpie was sin-binned on the intervention of touch-judge Jim Oswald and Hawks exacted retribution right from the restart with some wide spread, the injection of pace from substitute full-back Robbie Hair and Peter Jerecevich’s shrewd use of the narrow side to see Ally Maxwell thunder over.
Cue for more of the same? Well, no, as Howe continued to offer more. On the hour, as the script would have suggested Premiership fitness would have begun to tell, it was Howe who got their pick and go flowing. They opted to scrum rather than go for goal from a close-range penalty and though they were thwarted on that occasion, they remained unperturbed as stand-off Ross Aitken followed his older brother Iain on to the try sheet jinking over for brother to convert and give the home team a 24-12 lead.
The Aitken show continued with a 66th minute penalty and though Hawks did pull back a 72nd minute try through substitute front-row forward John Maclay – following a penalty which saw Howe lock Graeme Steedman yellow-carded – there just didn’t appear to be the appetite from the visitors to stage a fightback, such was the comprehensive energy and passion that Howe had brought to the matc

This article was originally posted on 23-Feb-2009, 08:11 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 23-Feb-2009, 11:02.