Melrose 13

Heriot's 40

David Morrison

a The Greenyards

THERE is something of a Marmite effect following Melrose around this season.

Stuart Johnson's side are either delightful or, as has been the case a couple of times already this season, rather distasteful.

Unfortunately for the home fans who turned up to watch Saturday's under-card at the Greenyards they were served up the latter.

While the effort was there from the home team, it was Heriot's who ran in some eye-catching tries.

And questions must be asked about the Melrose defending on occasions.

The afternoon started well enough with David Colvine slotting a couple of early penalties

But the pace of John Rae was evident as he raced in for the visitors' opening score approaching the quarter hour.

Just five minutes later Craig Robertson also darted beyond the defence to touch down.

Graham Wilson added both conversions for a 14-6 lead.

Every time Heriot's had the ball a try looked likely.

And they added to their tally in the 25th minute as the ball was fed along the line once more for Robertson to dive over in the corner.

Wilson added the difficult conversion.

And he was on target again just before half time as Rae ran in his second score of the match.

At 28-6, there looked little chance of Melrose taking anything from this match.

Heriot's made sure of the victory with a further two tries in the first quarter of an hour after the restart.

A driving maul led to Daniel Dineen crashing over and in the 55th minute Rae completed his hat-trick with another impressive turn of pace.

Melrose did manage to score in the closing minutes as Donald Crawford collected Roly Brett's cross-field kick to touch down.

Colvine added the conversion to make it 40-13.