Southern Knights 10

Ayrshire Bulls 29

David Morrison

at The Greenyards

HOPES of the Greenyards becoming a Knights fortress have quickly been demolished.

Although the Watsonians defeat on the opening day of the Super6 could be deemed unfortunate, Saturday's stampede by the Bulls exposed frailties aplenty in the Southern side.

The only real surprise during the evening match was that Ayrshire didn't leave with a bigger winning margin.

The Bulls pack were on top for most of the opening 40 minutes but mistakes had prevented possession and territory being turned into points.

It looked as though the teams would go in at the interval with only the three points apiece - following a Jason Baggot penalty for the home team and an earlier kick by Ross Thomson.

But in the 37th minute the Bulls driving maul was finally successful with Sam Kitchen touching down just wide of the posts.

Thomson added the conversion.

And in injury time Thompson scored his own try after racing onto a tremendous Stafford McDowell pass to sprint through the gap.

Thompson's second conversion in as many minutes made the half time score 17-3.

Improvement was needed by the Knights in the second half - and for a brief ten minutes or so it looked like they could get back into the game.

A driving maul in the 49th minute led to Russell Anderson appearing with the ball after touching down.

Baggot added the conversion to reduce the Ayrshire lead to just seven points.

But any hopes of turning this around were quickly stamped out by the Bulls.

A penalty to the corner led to Kitchen barging his way over yet again.

And McDowall scored another try just a few minutes later after charging down an attempted clearance to control the loose ball and touch down.

Thompson's conversion ended the match as a contest.

The Knights did mount a late rally with some good handling and a couple of line breaks but there was no way back.

Coach Rob Chrystie said: "There were too many errors from our players.

"We need to improve both individually and as a team."

Southern Knights: C Whyte, G Wood, P Anderson, J Baggott, J Jenkins; T Galbraith, B Colvine, S Gunn, R Anderson, C Young, A Runciman , D Redpath, N Irvine-Hess, R Knott & I Moody. Reps: G Shiells, E McQuillan, S Hutchison, N Sweeney, F Renwick, J Head & D Taylor.