Glasgow Hawks 30-34 Stirling C

Season '11-'12 certainly won't be dull if this encounter anything to go by! Hawks very grateful to support from GlasgAccies and GHK in putting squad together to face first up challenge against last year's champions. Despite scoring 5 tries Hawks defence struggled for any consistency and meant we were always chasing the game.
Stirling 2 scores up in 10mins from poor fringe defence and huge forward pass to centre who went under posts. Ref eventually penalised Stirling for offside after 17mins and Robbie made it 3-12. Great break by Johnny P from kick -off and link by Sean Murray got us back in game. 8-12.  Everything thrown at Stirling for next 20mins but poor execution made it easy for defence to keep score the same till H-T
Very positive HT chat, plan in place , all good to go- concede a score after 30secs!?! Loose ball kicked thru' on touchline, looks as if danger being cleared before mix up between 2 Hawks and Stirling can't believe their luck. 8-19.
Hawks respond by attacking everything, great counter by SeanM split defence and Gregor Hogg's support line finished it off.  Kept pressure on and great ball retention gave Mark Taylor a wee bit of space and pace/step finished it. 18-19, unfortunately no conversions kept us chasing.
Game right in mix and Stirling put phases together , put defence under pressure and centre exploited huge hole in line to go clean thru'. 18-24. Sean responds by attacking up right, ball recycled , Jamie Coskery made another great break and found SeanM on inside, to finish from 40m, 23-24.
High tempo from both teams, best Stirling score in corner after pulling Hawks defence apart, first conversion for long time made it 23-31, followed by pen for offside, 23-34.
Hawks throwing everything at them, training ground move off a line out put MarkT clean under posts, 30-34. Game on- looking for ref to play some injury time, but no luck!!
Humdinger of a game left Hawks rueing defensive problems but positive about attacking threats! Great shift from Adam and Jamie , from Accies and Mike and Greg from GHK, helped reinforce the togetherness at Hawks and set the tone for the season. Pulsating start to season!

This article was posted on 31-Aug-2011, 13:19 by Hugh Barrow.