“Never in doubt!!!…”
Is a well known cry from players and supporters when they come away from a game having been comfortably in the lead and then watched the lead get whittled away as the sands of time drop through the hour glass.
Heriots justly took the spoils the last time these two teams met in the Scottish Cup Final, have had a productive pre-season, indeed victory over Melrose in the inaugural “Charity Shield” fixture at The Greenyards was no mean feat, and were rightly feeling confident ahead of the opening fixture.
Watching from the terraces though, that confidence seemed to get blown away in the wind as Hawks’ pack blasted out of the blocks. An early kick at Goal was declined as Hawks issued intent by going for the lineout and the driving maul took Hawks very close to Heriots line. A minute later and Hawks’ powerful scrum gave Paddy Boyer the chance to open the season’s try account from two yards out. George Horne converting. 0 – 7
Heriots had a pretty big pack but the early impetus was all Hawks. Bolstered by the early score, Hawks scrum was full of power and the platform was being laid. On the 14th minute a very neat sleight of hand from George Horne slipped Fin Gillies through the first line of Heriots’ defence about 30 metres out, the support was on hand and Robbie Houliston backed himself to power into the corner for Hawks’ second try, converted by George Horne. 0 – 14.
When you are back up against a wall the only way out is to go forward and credit to Heriots as they battled their way back into the game with some powerful running from both their loose forwards and their backs. Hawks seemed reasonably comfortable in defence, but then as often happens, a slight error opened the door and so it proved as a Hawks lineout overthrow was gathered by Heriots on the halfway line and Heriots powered forward. The Hawks defence was pretty impressive but Heriots, quite rightly took their time, worked the phases and eventually the ball was spun out to the right hand side and Hawks had run out of defenders for Heriots’ opening try. 5 – 14 after 22 minutes.
As the clock began to wind down to Half time, George Horne stroked over a penalty to give Hawks a solid 17 – 5 half time lead.
The second half continued in the same vein with two good sides going toe to toe. Surprisingly, and much to the dismay of the Heriots supporters next to your scribe, Heriots’ kicking game was rather poor in the blustery, windy conditions and their frustration was palpably building as high kick after high kick was fielded comfortably by Robbie Houliston, Haddon McPherson etc and George Horne was sending slide rule kicks to the corners.
Things started to get interesting as Heriots started to get a bit frustrated at not making any great headway and had two players sent to the sin bin midway through the second half following numerous indiscretions. Unfortunately Hawks couldn’t capitalise on this and as one Hawks supporter (we’ll call him Bob) noted wryly, “just you watch, we’ll have a couple in the bin later on….”
We need to get Bob to pick out some Lottery numbers as that was exactly what unfolded later on in the match.
Heriots took heart from holding the score whilst being two men down and took the charge to Hawks with 15 minutes to go scoring a try via Cameron Ferguson and a grandstand finish had been set up. 10 - 17
The last 10 minutes were long and very hard work for Hawks as Heriots pushed hard to get a potential match equalising try. Scrum, maul and close range drives were successfully held at bay and the final whistle blew!
Summary:
Hawks can take a huge amount from this opening day victory, having blooded a number of debutants into the ranks, some exciting combinations to develop and injured players to return to action to strengthen the group. The Heriots supporters and committee were all in agreement that Hawks had deserved to win but in the end it was extremely close, however the cry was “Never in doubt!!!!”