Heriot’s 5

Melrose 8

Eilidh Walker at Goldenacre

MELROSE secured a scrappy win against 14-man Heriot’s at a windswept Goldenacre on Saturday to stay second in the Premiership table and secure a home semi-final play-off.

The wintery conditions in Edinburgh, that had seen Boroughmuir v Currie called off made life difficult for both teams with a combination of wind, freezing temperatures and wintery showers preventing any sustained periods of expansive play.

The momentum of the game was with Heriot’s in the first-half as Melrose got off to a slow start, as they struggled to assert the dominance they have shown of late against the reigning league champions.

It took 14 minutes of play before Heriot’s hooker Michael Liness burst through the Melrose defence to score for the opening try of the game and handing the hosts a 5-0 lead, while John Semple missed the conversion.

The Melrose defence rallied to hold off several attempts for the line from Heriot’s and with minutes left of the first-half Melrose produced one of the most entertaining phases of the match.

Austin Lockington and Sam Pecqueur gained crucial ground for Melrose and when Pecqueur offloaded to Thomson, he kicked the ball, over the try line and seemingly out of reach of the retreating Heriot’s defence and made a frantic dash to ground the ball but couldn’t reach it in time.

Jason Baggott made up for a failed penalty attempt earlier in the game by scoring a penalty just before the whistle, to take the half-time score to 5-3.

The second-half again got off to a slow start but it was clear that the momentum of the game had swung in Melrose’s favour. Heriot’s surrendered their grip on the game when after 56 minutes played; winger Robert Kay was shown the yellow card by referee Graham Wells, for a deliberate knock-on.

Just five minutes later, Heriot’s were reduced to 13-men when flanker Michael Maltman was red carded for punching.

With ten minutes left to play Melrose Captain Grant Runciman crossed for the match-winning try and with Baggott missing the conversion, this rounded out the day’s scoring at 5-8.

Melrose Head Coach, Rob Chrystie said: “The guts and desire to do well the boys showed today was great, it was a bit shaky there for a while and to come through that when the boys where pretty nervous, that was brilliant but the way we managed the game at times was disappointing.

“The target was once we got into the top four to try and get that home semi-final, we’ve got that now and the next target is to really build and get better. Moving into the next two games, we’ve got six weeks of exciting rugby ahead but we need to improve and we will, we’ll get better.

“It wasn’t the best game of rugby today but we can take the positives and that desire that got us over the line and we’ll draw a line under it and move on.”

Melrose have two games left before the semi-final play-offs.

Next week they face Hawick at the Greenyards and then the re-arranged Stirling County match from earlier in the season, which will be played at Bridgehaugh in March.

Melrose: Fraser Thomson, Austin Lockington, Nyle Godsmark, George Taylor, Sam Pecqueur, Jason Baggott, Murdo McAndrew, Iain Moody, Grant Runciman, Ruaridh Knott, Aaron Welsh, James Head, Ruari McLeod, Russell Anderson, Dan Elkington Replacements: Cameron McKay, Jamie Bhatti, Ali Grieve, Bruce Colvine, Gavin Wood