GHA Gazelles 36 vs Anniesland Hawks 0
 
Braidholm, 3pm Saturday 17th October
 
Well, you heard it here first: the recession is over. Never mind Robert Peston and his irritating pauses, or that bloke who's the business correspondent on Reporting Scotland yet doesn't understand the difference between a write down and a write off. Anniesland Hawks lost so many players to work between Friday morning and one o'clock on Saturday that at this rate we should achieve full employment by Friday afternoon. Undeterred we travelled to Braidholm with just 15.
 
With no substitutes and a number of people playing out of position, including lacking anyone who had hooked before, it was never going to be easy, but losing our outside half three minutes in to the game merely confirmed the difficulty of our position. The fourteen remaining struggled on, but we won very few scrums (they feed their front rows on concrete pies at Braidholm, it would appear) and had to rely on posession from penalties and turnovers - and that didn't amount to much. If anything the positive was that they didn't score more. In the last fifteen minutes we decided to change strategy and kick behind them any time we had the ball. Hardly champagne rugby, but at least it meant that we bought ourselves some space and when the inevitable mistake came, it was closer to our line than ours.

The whistle came as something of a relief. The difference in atmosphere to seven days earlier was stark. We are always going to struggle when numbers are thin. In the end it was an achievement to start with 15 and it goes without saying that the more of that 15 are genuine Hawks then the higher are our chances. That said, the boys who are currently taking to the field are getting regular rugby and enjoying it. The benefits of that alone will tell in time.
 
Next game: Anniesland Hawks vs Loch Lomond  3pm - 24th October, Old Anniesland.

This article was posted on 21-Oct-2009, 21:02 by Hugh Barrow.