Melrose 31

Highland 14

Iain Houston

at The Greenyards

Melrose returned to winning ways on Saturday.

Donald Crawford opened the scoring with a penalty after two minutes.

Despite a lot of huffing and puffing from both teams there was no more scoring in the opening half hour.

But Melrose did add to their tally before the interval.

Highland's Tom Smith was sin-binned for a high tackle just before the interval.

From the resultant penalty Melrose kicked the ball to touch.

From the rolling maul Crawford chipped the ball through the Highland defence for Gary McWilliam to pick up and dive over at the posts. Crawford converted for a 10-0 lead.

Just three minutes into the second half Trystan Andrews crashed over to the left of the posts for another try.

Crawford again converted for a 17 point advantage.

On 49 minutes a grand off-load from prop Jack Dobie allowed McWilliam to run in for his second touch-down.

Crawford again added the extras.

The Melrose bonus point try came five minutes later.

James Brown broke out of defence and scorched down the far side before being caught just short of the line.

From the resultant ruck, Keiran Clark picked up and dived over.

Crawford's conversion from the touch-line gave Melrose plenty breathing space.

Highland did respond with a Mike Gordon try.

Rupeni Rokoduguni added the conversion.

And with six minutes remaining Callum Carson took a quick tap penalty passing to Smith to score a further try for the visitors.

The Borders Distillery player-of-the-match went jointly to Ben McLean and Ethan McVicker.

​Melrose: Keiran Clark, Ethan McVicker, Gary McWilliam, Christiaan Smit, James Brown, Donald Crawford, Douglas Crawford, Jake Fairley, Richard Ferguson, Jack Dobie, Thomas Brown, Gregor Lindsay, Ben McLean, Grant Runciman, Trystan Andrews. Replacements – Sean Fisher, Ethan Deakin, Callum Folan, Elliot Ruthven, Lewis Mallin.