Gallant County take the drop

Mar 25 2009 by Alan Rennie, Stirling Observer Wednesday

COUNTY are relegated but they went down with a battling victory that also consigned their hosts Hawick into Division Two for the first time ever.

Mansfield Park has never been a happy hunting ground for Stirling teams. Even in the vintage 94-95 championship winning season, Hawick was the only club to defeat County.

My records show just one previous win at the home of the Greens – the 19-15 success in October 1990. The Stirling team that day was MacDonald; Logan, Harper, Jardine, Turner (McKenzie); Stewart, Imrie; Graham, McKenzie, Robertson, Hamilton, Russell, Brown, Ireland and Brough.

So Saturday’s heroes matched the feats of a very illustrious group of players indeed.

Best player on the park on Saturday was County stand-off Brian Archibald, who took the game to the home side with quick handling skills and awesome power at the point of contact.

He gained the John Graham (Metals) Ltd man of the match award with three votes. The impressive Stevie Wilson earned two votes and Gregor Brodie one.

Another important contribution came from skipper Alex Moffat on his return after a second half of the season that has been dogged with injury problems.

He finished off County’s scintillating opening try in 17 minutes and was never far from the centre of the action throughout.

I’ve always been impressed by the play of young Gregor Brodie and he’ll surely never forget his league debut for the season on Saturday, playing a full part in the County win.

And what a shift the flankers Tim Clarke and Colin Eadie put in, tackling like demons against a souped-up and worldy-wise Hawick pack, led by the pros McNeill and Palepoi and backed up by the Landels brothers.

The contributions of the Stirling replacements – Garry Mountford, Kevin Bryce, Jason Hill and Gordon McRorie – were also quite outstanding.

Hawick’s best player was veteran scrum-half Kevin Reid who delivered a master-class on how to disrupt opposition ball at the set scrummage.

The opening exchanges were fierce, as could be expected with so much at stake. However, with a variable wind in their favour, County had Hawick pinned back for long spells.

And Brian Archibald punished a scrummage indiscretion by popping over the first penalty in eight minutes.

His conversion of Moffat’s try, which was prefaced by darts at the line by Archibald, Ben Addison and Gregor Brodie, had made it 10-0.

Tim Clarke got flattened in a collision with Hawick’s McNeill and, in the next minute, the Greens pulled back five points with a try by left-wing Johnstone.

However, County piled on more pressure and Graham Calder spotted a gap in the Hawick defence and deftly kicked ahead.

An alert Ross Aitken flew off in pursuit and he was rewarded by a favourable bounce which allowed him to touch down.

It was 15-5 and starting to look good for Stirling but the home pack then started to dominate proceedings. Their pressure was rewarded when hooker Matt Landels plunged over from close range.

That made it 15-12 and County had to hang on like grim death to prevent further scores against them prior to the interval.

After the break, County played some good continuity rugby and, in defence, their tackling was exemplary.

However, the writing looked on the wall in the 50th minute when Tim Clarke was yellow carded for a high tackle.

Neish’s penalty made it 15-all and it was all looking good for the Greens.

However, for a club that has produced backs of the ability of Jim Renwick and Tony Stanger, the Hawick of today lack guile and pace as finishers as their lowly “points for” total would indicate.

County soaked up the pressure and then started mounting counter-attacks of their own and, in the 66th minute, Stirling scored one of their best tries of the season, the play swinging to the left then the right with super breaks by Ben Addison and Stevie Wilson before Graham Lyndsay crossed the whitewash with real panache.

Brian Archibald converted, despite noisy attempts to put him off by the by-now jittery home crowd. That made the score 22-15 in County’s favour.

However, Hawick refused to yield and a further Neish penalty put them within four points with 10 minutes to go.

Play swayed back and forth but, in the last minute, Brian Archibald gained possession and found the energy to slice through the Hawick defence.

He drew the last man and Ben Addison was at his elbow to gleefully accept his scoring pass and blaze over the line.

Archibald rubbed more salt in the Hawick wounds with the conversion and that ended the match as a contest. A punch-up right after the final whistle showed the tensions that had existed among both sets of players.

While the players hadn’t known, sections of the crowd listening to Radio Borders were already aware that, with earlier kick-offs, both Edinburgh Accies and Watsonians had pulled off unlikely wins.

Those results meant that County were doomed no matter what happened but it was the defeat by Stirling that dashed Hawick’s survival hopes.

Scorers: Hawick - tries - G Johnstone, M Landels; conv - Neish; pens - Neish 2. Stirling - tries - Moffat, Aitken, Lyndsay, Addison; convs - Archibald 3; pen - Archibald.

Hawick – J Coutts; S Anderson, R Scott, C Neish, G Johnstone; A Weir, K Reid; B McNeill, M Landels, S Linton, G Petrie, K Millar, O Palepoi, N McTaggart and D Lowrie. Reps - B Campbell, N Renwick, N Little, D Landels and M Robertson.

Stirling County – G Brodie; G Lyndsay, B Addison, S Wilson, R Aitken; B Archibald, G Calder; M Hunter, A Moffat, W Davies, B McFarlane, G Gilchrist, C Eadie, T Clarke and C Deacons. Reps – G Mountford, K Bryce, J Hill, G McRorie and J Graham.

Referee - Andy Macpherson, SRU.

Stirling County RFC is grateful to main sponsors Simpson Donald and Ondeo Industrial Solutions.

County play their final league game at home to Boroughmuir this Saturday with a 3pm kick-off.

It will be the last league game in charge for chief coach Ian Jardine who has decided to step down after three years at the helm.

There’s also Sunday rugby at Bridgehaugh with the ground hosting the match between Scotland under-18s and the Boys Clubs of Wales.

Entry is free and kick-off is 2pm. In the squad are County boys Robbie Boswell, Sean Kennedy, Danny Gilmour, Stuart Edwards and Glenn Bryce.

Also on Sunday is the Scottish under-15 cup final at Murrayfield between County and Ayr (kick-off 1.30pm).

See Friday’s edition for all the latest team news.