So the final day of the 2010 7s season arrived on a scorching day at Kilmarnock. Unfortunately this coincided with the 10hr beach party sesh at the Glasgow Uni Hive the previous night and most of the GHK squad arrived (with varying degrees of tardiness) with little sleep and hangovers. Needless to say 1 or 2 were rather sluggish to begin with and Camie was "nowhere to be seen or heard from". However, the GHK 7s way of limited warm up was again adopted, more due to necessity as a car of beach partiers and more importantly strips arrived 10mins before kick off...

First game up was Hamilton, who we had previously beaten at Hillhead a few weeks earlier. Sadly though GHK started dreadfully and were effectively out of the main competition by half time. Some very sloppy play resulted in a strong Hamilton side going 4 tries up in the first half. The second half was a much better performance (still by no means flawless) and tries from Hugh Parker and Gordi Reid made the final score about 31-12. Off to the plate competition...while Hamilton went on to win the main trophy.

In the quarter finals of the Plate, GHK played Garnock and having gone behind to a very dubious try, they then took control and began to play some of the flowing 7s they have shown they can play this year. Eventually GHK ran out comfortable winners. Next up was the President's VII in the semis and a fairly tight first half seemed to suggest it would be a tricky encounter. However in second half, GHK ran riot starting to play a lot better with the hangovers beginning to be sweated out in the 27 degree heat. They were also helped with the opposition going down to 6 men as Hugh Parker was taken out dangerously in the air. With the player in the sin bin, GHK punished the President's VII progressing the final very comfortably.

The final to be played on the main pitch was against old rivals Marr who had looked impressive throughout, narrowly missing out on the main competition losing in extra time to a team of massive Fijians and Gus. GHK kicked off the final and went ahead with a try by Ross McCall. Robbie Shedden then added to this to give GHK a deserved 14-0 lead and looking good. Marr came right back into the game in the second half though and scored 3 tries to go 19-14 ahead with not long to play. But a fantastic try finished off by Andy Shedden put GHK back in the game and the final whistle went...19-19...into sudden death extra time. Marr won the toss and elected to receive and had GHK under pressure but good GHK defence turned the ball over and some good hands got the ball out to Kerr Gossman who stepped and sprinted 70m to score the winning try, silencing the large Marr contingent in the crowd. GHK, although disappointed to lose out in the cup, were the Plate winners much to the delight of coach Kenny Hamilton. He said "It's a fantastic achievement for the boys and I'm over the moon that we won the Plate"....or something along those lines...

Bar the opening game, it was a good end to a 7s season that brought 3 finals -2nd place at Hillhead, Cup Winners at Helensburgh, Plate Winners at Kilmarnock. Congratulations to all the boys that played and to Kenny and Charlie for taking time out to help run the team.

Squad
Scott Cameron
Hugh Parker
Gordi Reid
Robbie Shedden
Andy Shedden
Danny Hoffman
Kerr Gossman
Ross McCall
Euan Cadger
Russell Johnston

This article was posted on 24-May-2010, 18:04 by Hugh Barrow.