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Saturday 8th September 2007
HOWE OF FIFE 36 – 5 GRANGEMOUTH STAGSThe Stags travelled to Cupar on Saturday with 5 players from last weekend’s victorious team unavailable, mostly due to Paul Carters wedding (congratulations Paul). However the return of Gavin Curran and Mike Gowdy combined with Brendan Tucker and Davy Wilson given starting berths as opposed to the bench, plus Gavin McLuskey promoted to the bench following good reports from the 2nd XV, this weekends team was every bit as capable of a victory.
Travel chaos caused by road works on the Forth Bridge saw kick off delayed until 16:25 hours. During the truncated warm up the Stags appeared sharp and focused and during the initial exchanges appeared the more composed team with Howe appearing to be affected by the long wait.
After only 6 minutes Gav Mcluskey was given his chance to prove himself as Stevie Binnie was forced to retire with a dead leg, but all was still positive at this stage with an obvious game plan working well and a good breaks up the wing by Tucker. However, the first score of the match came after 16 minutes with the Howe stand off breaking the defensive line then floating a miss pass out wide. Grangemouth defending too narrow meant the centre stripped the cover defence for pace and scored the games first try.
Howe scored the second try of the game when a Stags lineout throw went awry in the 22 and Howe’s No8 was on hand to tidy up and drive towards the line. With both conversions missed the score stood at 10-0 to the home team.
The stag’s first score of the match came from one of Mike Gowdy’s many bursts through Howe’s first defensive line. Gowdy ghosted through the initial defence and a simple pop to Bubba Hayes beat the second line but left him with it all to do from 35 yards, Bubba’s firstly out paced the covering prop then rounded the full back to score on the stroke of half-time, Brunton missed the extras – 10-5 in Howe’s favour at half time.
Within 10 minutes of the restart Howe scored 2 tries, one from a well worked driving maul and the other from a quick lineout allowing the stand off space to work and slice through the stags defence leaving the score at 22-5 to Howe.
For the next quarter of an hour the Stags yet again held their own with several surging runs in the centre, while Tucker moved up to backrow after Gillander’s retiral due to a head knock. During this period Brunton missed an opportunity with the boot to narrow the deficit, stereotypical of the Stags inability to be clinical at crucial times, combined with ill discipline at the breakdown let Howe off the hook on too many occasions.
Howe were to finish the stronger scoring 2 tries in the last 10 minutes bring the final score to 36-5. A lot of hard work is required this week at training as the Stags host Kilmarnock at Glensburgh with kick off at 3pm.
1. Marc Stirling 2. Davy Wilson 3. Brian Johnstone 4. Dugal West 5. Steve Binnie 6. Gavin Curran 7. Graeme Mcniff 8. Charlie Gillanders 9. Daniel Rawling 10. Mike Gowdy 11. Brendan Tucker 12. Tony Hayes 13. Caine McIntyre 14. Murray Forbes 15. David Brunton Subs:
Scorer: Anthony Hayes
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