Arnold Clark Men's Premiership: Kelso ease relegation fears with dominant second half versus Edinburgh Accies
02/15/2025 12:26 PM
Edinburgh Accies 17
Kelso 36
DAVID BARNES @ Raeburn Place
IT was nip and tuck for the first 50 minutes of this game, but thereafter only one team looked like they were really determined to secure a place in the top flight of Scottish club rugby next season (with a plan as to how they are going to achieve the goal).
Kelso scored 24 unanswered points during that period of near complete domination, with their relentless push defence harassing Accies into losing control of a game-plan which had served them well earlier in the match. The Borderers will now approach next weekend’s return to Edinburgh to take on play-off chasing Currie Chieftains with a well-earned sense of belief off the back of achieving three hard-fought wins on the bounce since their 66-7 shellacking at the hands of Ayr at the end of January.
Their destiny is very much in their own hands, with this bonus-point win taking them seven points clear of third bottom Accies with five regular season games still to play.
URC: Edinburgh v Zebre: Sean Everitt's side out-gunned by fired up visitors
Franco Smith "honoured" to be linked to Wales head coach role
“It wasn’t pretty, was it?” said Kelso player-coach Bruce McNeil with the wry smile of a man who couldn’t give two hoots about whether plaudits are being handed out for artistic merit. “With the magnitude of the game, in terms of where we were in the league,it was never going to be pretty, to be honest.Credit to Accies, they played on top of us for a lot of that game.I just think we maybe squeezed them a little in defence and we put a lot of emphasis onbeing a really hard team to beat coming up here.
“We know that they can score tries and we know they can play from anywhere, so we worked really hard on our defence this week and I think we got a lot of purchase from that. We maybe strangled them a little bit.
“In the first half, we kind of got caught up in their game which didn’t really suit us, so we just reset at half-time. We didn’t capitulate, which earlier on in the season we did. And when we got chances came we took them. We were pretty relentless on their line and retained the ball well to get the scores we needed, which was pleasing.”
“We’re fighting for our lives and so are Accies,” he added. “Of course guys are nervous, and you make mistakes. You try and do things that you maybe ordinarily wouldn’t.I think that was the case for us in the first half, but I think in the second half, we backed ourselves and maybe were a bit unselfish in how we approached the challenge – doing the hard yards as opposed to maybe looking to do something on our own.We just pulled together as a team.
“In that period before Christmas when we were numbers down, it gave some guys a bit more exposure, so that has, in a roundabout way, strengthened our squad. Now we’ve got experienced guys coming back. They’re hitting a bit of form.We’ve got more depth to choose from and the guys are really playing for that jersey. So, we just need to keep working really hard and make sure that we don’t get away ahead of ourselvesbecause we’re certainly not out of the dramas yet.”
Meanwhile, Accies coach Iain Berthinussen couldn’t hide his frustration at the end, having seen his team slump to a third straight defeat agains a team they would have targeted as a win at the start of the season, meaning them Raeburn Place men have now been sucked deep into the relegation quagmire.
“You go 17-12 up at home and you would have thought emotionally you would be really charged, but we then conceded 24 unanswered points so … I’m not really sure what has gone there, if I’m honest,” he shrugged. “We talked a lot about turning them because they don’t really want to play from their own half, but we kept reverting to box-kicks and they were reading that we were doing that, and I think they scored 14-points off charged down box-kicks.”
“We were got some really good change out of our longer kicking game in the first half, and I think we played some really good stuff during that period, and emotionally it felt like we were in a really good place. But then we just didn’t kick-on, but fair play to Kelso because they really grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck.”
Kelso struck when Archie Barbour scrambled over on the right, although Dwain Patterson couldn’t manage the touchline conversion, but Accies bounced back when scrum-half Patrick Ritchie had the ball slapped out of his hands at the base of a ruck five yards from the try-line and had the wherewithal to takea quick tap scuttle over for a try which was converted by Jamie Loomes‘ to edgied the hosts into a narrow lead just before the half-hour mark.
Twice during that opening 30 minutes, Kelso were caught overplaying from deep following long Accies clearances, and they rode their luck on both occasions with referee Mike Adamson first awarding them the scrum for an Accies knock-on whilst gathering the loose ball, and then calling for the line-out to be retaken after Hamish Tweed’s quickly taken throw didn’t go to hand and was latched onto by Robbie Chalmers, who was furious that his team were not allowed a chance to capitalise.
That luck ran out for Kelso when they were once again caught out in the backfield and penalised for holding on right in front of the posts, allowing Loomes to slot three more easy points.
But the visitors had the last say of the first half when, playing a penalty advantage, they ground down Accies’ try-line resistance with around a dozen heavy carries, before flipping the ball out for Liam Herdman to slip through a gap and over for the try. Patterson’s conversion made it 10-12 at the break.
Loomes did have long-range penalty effort which would have edged his team back in front just before the break following an air-borne collision chasing a Kelso box-kick, but his effort didn’t quite have the legs.
Accies fired out of the blocks to score a near length of the park try early in the second-half, with Vincent Hart launching a counter from 10 yards short of his own line, exchanging passes with Chalmers along the way, before sending Robbie Kent on a final sprint to the posts. You would have bet your mortgage on the home winger making it himself but Barbour did brilliantly to get back for the try-saving tackl on the line, and Accies did well to hold their nerve and clear the messy ruck, which created quick enough ball for Loomes to scramble over, then convert himself.
Unfortunately for the home side, that was the last real shot they fired. Kelso second-row Cammy Thompson burrowed over after a l0ng period of pressure and Patterson’s conversion gave the Borderers a two-point lead, and they struck again just a few monte later when Barbour collected an aimless Accies clearance and launched and launched an attack which culminated in Adam Hall stepping back since Max Wallace then motoring home from 35-yards to claim the bonus-point.
Kelso continued to turn the screw, with Robbie Tweedie collecting the bouncing ball and squeezing over in the corner after another sustained bombardment of the Accies line,, and it looked like the replacement winger has scored again straight from the restart he broke down the right touchline, but Hart managed to get back to make the try-line tackle.
A late Patterson penalty completed the scoring and the final whistle was celebrated uproariously by the away team, with good reason.
Teams –
Edinburgh Accies: R Chalmers (N Brown 61); R Kent, N Armstong (V Hart 28), C Allan, M Wallace; J Loomes, P Ritchie (B Brannan 77); C Imrie (P Hayes 61), F McAslan (G Hall 70), C Crookshanks, E McVie, S Whittaker (C Bain 65), G Napier, G Davis, T Drennan (R Purvis 55).
Kelso: A Barbour; D Patterson, A Hall, F Robson, H Tweedie (R Tweedie 52); L Herdman ((M Shaw 77), A Tait ( W Tweedie 75); G Shiells, E Knox (N Barnes 75), D Gamble (A Asante 77), C Thompson (S Wood 77), K Melbourne, J Utterson, M Woodcock (A Jackson 77), B McNeil.
Referee: Mike Adamson
Scoreres –
Edinburgh Accies: Tries: Ritchie, Loomes; Con: Loomes 2; Pen: Loomes
Kelso: Tries: Barbour, Herdman, Thompson, Hall, R Tweedie; Con: Patterson 4; Pen: Patterson.
Scoring sequence (Edinburgh Accies first): 0-5; 5-5; 7-5; 10-5; 10-10; 10-12 (h-t) 15-12; 17-12; 17-17; 17-19; 17-24; 17-26; 17-31; 17-34.
Player-of-the-Match: Edinburgh Accies scrum-half scored a fine opportunist try, provided the physicality of a fourth back-rower and battled throughout, but it has to be a member of the visiting pack who squeezed the hosts into submission through relentless line-speed and dogged determination at the breakdown, with Cammy Thompson just edging it ahead of Bruce McNeil and Jack Utterson.
Talking point: Accies have scope to rescue themselves from the web they have become entangled in, but they will need to sit down as a player group as try to figure out why they decided to change from a long-kicking strategy which was working into turning themselves human skittles lining themselves up to be knocked down again and again by Kelso’s increasingly confident blitz defence. Next weekend’s home match against fellow strugglers Marr really could by make or break.
The post Arnold Clark Men’s Premiership: Kelso ease relegation fears with dominant second half versus Edinburgh Accies appeared first on Scottish Rugby News from The Offside Line.
