From our travelling reporter Alex Christie

Hamilton 23 - Anniesland Hawks 27
Laigh Bent
Saturday 10th October 3pm

Readers will have to accept the apologies of their reporter for the brevity of this report on Anniesland Hawks' first competitive encounter- it's difficult to remember too much while you're gasping for breath after thirty seconds on the park. The squad had sixteen members, although they did not all have the luxury of playing in the positions to which they were accustomed. That made a difference for the first twenty minutes, but after that, and a bit of rejigging, the team settled down and played some pretty attractive attacking rugby. Defensively things were not quite so strong, it would be difficult to imagine how they could be on the back of one training session involving only slightly more than half the assembled squad, but as a mark of the team's determinantion one scrum five metres from our own line ended in a line out ten yards from the Hamilton line.

It was Hamilton who opened the scoring, exerting strong pressure from the kick off and bursting through some weakish tackling. Hawks then replied with an unconverted try from Ewan Cadger. Two tries and a penalty for Hamilton followed. Hawks then scored a further four tries from Hogg, Goldie, White and someone else, but I'm afraid your reporter was far too far from the action to make out who it was. One try was converted. Hamilton scored a final try in the last minute of the game.

The game was a great success. Not only because 16 players from Anniesland and 20 from Hamilton got a game when they otherwise wouldn't have, but because it didn't matter where or at what level at Anniesland each player aspired to play, they all did as well as they could. GHK and Accie players noticeably played with more confidence after watching the boys from Hawks slice through Hamilton's defence, and equally the boys from Hawks learnt that rugby can be played in many ways, some of which aren't very pretty, but that if you want to walk off as the winners, you just have to get on with it.

Next game: GHA Gazelles away, Saturday 17th October

Squad: Garcia,Syme, Henderson, Wiggins, Neal, McCallum, Johnstone, McGarrity, Campbell-Young, Goldie, White, Boyer, Cadger, Hogg, Christie, Dunlop

This article was originally posted on 12-Oct-2009, 07:12 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 12-Oct-2009, 07:28.