‘CRAIGS FIND GOING TOUGH AT HAWICK

After last weeks barnstorming opener it was back down to earth for an understrength Whitecraigs who travelled to the borders to meet promotion favourites Hawick YM.  The ‘Craigs team showed several changes with Haswell up front, Hart, and K Hunter in the back row, a new half back pairing of Johnston and A Stevenson and Kemp on the wing.. 

The referee was also making his debut and soon made sure that the crowd knew who was blowing the whistle.  However, ‘Craigs got off to a solid start and after 7 minutes Smylie charged down a Hawick kick and followed up to grab an early try that Moffat converted to take the visitors into a 7 point lead.   Hawick soon came back into the game and 3 minutes later they converted a penalty kick. YM kept up the pressure and it was only thanks to a try-saving tackle from McKelvie that they didn’t add to their tally. The Hawick pack were starting to dominate proceedings up front and they pinned the Mearns boys into their own 22.  A well taken forward drive saw the ball finally go to the Hawick Centres who crossed the line to nudge ahead by 3 points.  Moffat kept the Whitecraigs team in the game with a penalty kick around 30 minutes and the score remained at 10 points each at the half time whistle.

The second half continued to see ‘Craigs under pressure and with the forwards struggling to feed good ball to the backs, frustration set in.  The penalty count rose and both sides gained another 3 points from successful kicks, with Moffat again getting the ball between the posts. 

With tempers frayed, Smylie and his Hawick counterpart were each shown a yellow card for swinging handbags.  Undaunted the Craigs defence held firm after several strong Hawick attacks.  Fisher and Percival put in some fine tackles to deny the home team a try and it wasn’t until 60 minutes had gone that Hawick finally breached the defence to notch up an excellent converted try .   ‘Craigs K Hunter was shown the yellow card in the last quarter of the game and a further penalty from the home side saw ‘Craigs go down 23 points to 13 when the final whistle blew. 

As coach Jim Henderson said, “Going to the Borders is always difficult and this game did provide an invaluable insight into what is required to get through this league.”  

‘Craigs will be looking to learn from this testing encounter and will be expecting a better performance when they meet league newcomers Lasswade at Aurs Road next Saturday. 

Although the ‘Craigs 2nds lost a hard fought encounter with Garnock losing 41 points to 21, it was the Under 18s that again flew the flag for Whitecraigs with a resounding 57 points to 3 victory over neighbours Cartha.  Although this was a fantastic team performance, W Corbett drew the applause with some excellent play and scrum half M Houston showed an almost faultless display of kicking for the posts.

Team: Laidlaw, Haswell, McCormack, F. Hunter, H. Hunter, Hart, K Hunter, Smylie, Johnston, A Stevenson, Moffat (capt.), Kemp, Fisher, McKelvie, G Hutton. Subs – N. Blamire, Percival, Davies.