Arnold Clark Men's Premiership: Selkirk get the better of Hawick to climb into the play-off seedings

Yesterday at 01:26 PM

Selkirk 34

Hawick 15

DAVID BARNES @ Philiphaugh

THIS hard-fought and well-deserved home win lifted Selkirk into the play-off seedings of the Arnold Clark Men’s Premiership with seven games of the regular season left to play, and confirmed that Hawick are in a dog-fight against five or six other sides to avoid being one of the three teams relegated out of the top flight of Scottish club rugby next season.

“I think over the 80 minutes, we did deserve the win,” reflected victorious head coach Gordon Henderson afterwards. “It was a typical Border battle. There were some big hits out there and I thought Hawick played some really good rugby. It was tight at half-time and we knew we needed to coming out the traps pretty quickly in the second half, and we managed to do that to get over the line. But what a battle! The boys put a huge shift in – especially defensively in that last 20 minutes when we were in our half more than I would have liked because we didn’t exit very well. Over the piece, I’m really happy with the five points.

“It is nice to be up in the play-off places, and as I’ve said to the guys: we’re there on merit, but it is going to take a lot of hard work for us to stay there,” Henderson added. “We play everybody above us, we’ve got to go to Heriot’s next week, we’ve got to go to Watsonians (on 15th March) and we’ve got togo to Ayr (on 29th March). We’ve also got Currie down here (on 1st March) who we’ve just taken over that fourth spot from. So, it’s a challenge, but that’s what we play for the game for. We won’t be favourites in any of those games, but I know we can compete in all those games, and if we get to the last 20 minutes and we’re still in the game against any of these team then we’ve got a chance because our fitness is really good.”

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Hawick’s build-up to this match was disrupted by a series of injuries to players, but head coach Graham Hogg was not looking for excuses when reflecting on the situation his team are now in.

“I can’t fault the boys for effort, especially in the first half when we did a lot of defending, and I think that took its toll,” he reflected. “We had plenty of opportunities in the second half but just didn’t get into our attacking game. That’s probably credit to Selkirk in terms of how they defended for each other and worked hard. We were second best today.

“We’ve put stuff to the boys over the last two weeks to highlight how important this next month is, and especially the next fortnight when we have two home matches against Glasgow Hawks and Melrose which have now turned into must-win games,” he continued. “There is stuff form today that we can pick out which was really positive, but there is a lot of work to do to make sure that we are not on the end of a result like this again.

“We’re not a bad team,” he stressed. “I’ve not had a week like it in rugby in terms of injuries, with five players we’d have hoped would play today being ruled out, so we’re down to the bare bones. But that’s not an excuse, there is plenty teams have been in this predicament, and it is up to the players who are here now to rally round and get the job done. There is plenty of rugby ability there, and there is plenty of desire there, so we just need to build the boys’ condfidence back up and fly into these two weeks.”

Kirk Ford stroked Hawick into an early lead with a 40-yard penalty from right in front of the posts, after Luke Pettie was deemed guilty of languishing on the wrong side of a ruck, but they couldn’t build on that.

Selkirk had a chance to even the scores after the visitors were punished for a similar offence a few minutes oater, but they kicked to the corner instead of going for the sticks, and cashed in when the ball was switched from the line-out to the middle of the park and Ross Nixon bounced Cian Riddell before offloading to Corey Tait, who powered over to score the first of his three tries on the day against his hometown club.

The pendulum swung back the other way again when Andrew Mitchell launched a powerful break from about halfway, with Sam Frizzel in support, and when Hugo Alderson got a hand to the Hawick second-row’s offload, the Selkirk scrum-half was yellow-carded, which seemed harsh given it appeared that a genuine attempt had been made to catch the ball.

The visitors quickly capitalised by kicking the penalty to the corner, securing the line-out ball, and then transferring slickly across the park for Charlie Welsh to scamper over on the left. Ford added the tricky conversion.

But 14-man Selkirk dug in, and they hit back whenNixon chipped an excellently weighted diagonal towards the left corner, which Ben Pickles gathered on the full without breaking stride, and Aaron McColm converted.

That meant the hosts emerged from the 10 minutes they had played with a man less having scored the same number of points as their opponents, and then a huge scrum five minutes before the break propelled Hawick off their own ball to earn a penalty on the visiting 10-yard line. While Alderson’s long range shot at goal sailed to the right of the sticks, another period of Selkirk domination had been initiated, which Hawick initially defended well before eventually yielding another penalty (for a ruck offence right in front of the posts this time) and Alderson didn’t need a second invitation to help himself to three more easy points to make it 17-10 at the turnaround.

Selkirk struck first at the start of the second half, with slick hands across the backline releasing Josh Welsh on the left. The big winger veered infield then delivered a perfectly timed offload to send Alderson, who had run a classic scrum-half support line, over for the try.

Hawick simply had to score next, and they did, eventually, after several minutes of relentless pressure, with Fraser Renwick grounding the ball over the line at the end of a line-out maul which had been created by a not-rolling-away penalty.

The key in tight matches is to fortify any points you get and make absolutely sure that you don”t hand your opponents a quick way back into the game, so Hawick will be kicking themselves that they once again lost a try straight after scoring, by conceding another ruck penalty which allowed Selkirk to go to the corner. It was Tait who bustled over for his second try of the match, securing the four-try bonus-point in the process.

Hawick tried to rally but they couldn’t seem to catch a break. A huge tackle by Pickles on Mitchell turned the ball over, Charlie Welsh fluffed a scoring chance on the right when he seemed to dive for the line early, then the same player thought he had made up for his earlier error with an acrobatic finish in the corner only to discover that referee Michael Todd had spotted a forward-pass during the lead-up.

Selkirk lost captain Andrew McColm to the sin-bin and the game loosened up with the home side kicking long and seeming to back themselves to absorb Hawick’s attempts to punch their way back into it. Despite the stress this caused their coach, it proved to be a fairly effective strategy.

Tait drove the final nail into Hawick’s coffin on the stroke of full-time. when Selkirk pressed their opponents right back onto their own line, the ball squirted out the side of the ruck, and the recent Scotland Under-20s star – who inexplicably seems to have been catapulted from the Scottish Rigby pathway – looked as fresh as he had in the first minute when picking up the loose ball and charging over for his hat-trick try.

Teams –

Selkirk: C Anderson; J Welsh (F Douglas,  77), A Grant-Suttie, R Nixon, B Pickles (B Cullen,. 71); Aaron McColm (E Wilson 68), H Alderson; L Pettie (R Joyce, 72), J Bett (L Cassidy 59), B Riddell (C Smyth 47), Andrew McColm, J Fisher, C Tait, T Wilson, K Westlake.

Hawick: K Ford; M Reid, A Mitchell (G Huggan 71), L Armstrong, C Welsh; C Riddell (O Gray 53), L Henry; S Muir, R Anderson (G Welsh 39), N Little ( A Cannon 64), S Frizzel (M Renwick 74), H Donaldson, F Renwick, M Brogan (W Donaldson 74), C Sutherland.

Referee: Michael Todd

Scorers –

Selkirk: Tries: Tait 3, Pickles, Alderson; Con: Alderson 2, Aaron McColm; Pen: Alderson.

Hawick: Tries: C Welsh, F Renwick; Con: Ford; Pen: Ford.

Scoring sequence (Selkirk first): 0-3; 5-3; 7-3; 7-8- 7-10; 12-10; 14-10; 17-10 (h-t) 22-10; 22-5; 27-15; 29-15; 34-15.

Yellow card –

Selkirk: Alderson (18 mins), Andrew McColm (73 mins)

Player-of-the-Match: There was big performance across the park for Selkirk, with Andrew Grant-Suttie a wrecking ball in defence, Ross Nixon a shrewd operator at inside-centre, Huge Alderson a live-wire at scrum-half, and Kieran Westlake a steady-hand at No 8 – but hat-trick hero Corey Tait, who started at blindside flanker then moved to his usual position of hooker, has to get the nod for yet another all-action display which further underlines the sense of confusion that he is no longer part of the Scottish Rugby academy programme.

Talking points: It doesn’t rain, it pours. After being the dominant club in the Premiership for the last two seasons with what felt like a clean bill of health every week, Hawick’s already depleted squad after retirements and sabbaticals has now been decimated by injuries to the point where getting a competitive team out week on week is proving a struggle. But there are still class acts and experienced performers littered across the squad, and with the exception of Ayr’s visit to Mansfield on 15th March, they can rightly look at all their remaining matches as winnable … if they can build up a decent head of steam. It is going to be a battle every step of the way.