Glasgow Hawks’ hopes of gaining a foothold in the top four of the BT Premiership suffered a set back after the Old Anniesland men were edged out by a hungry Hawick side in a match of compelling intensity.
With Glasgow Warriors' James Eddie and Tyrone Holmes in their back row, Hawks should have been sufficiently dominant in the forwards to win comfortably, but as their coach, Peter Laverie, admitted his side too often inflicted gunshot injuries to the foot, resulting most notably in Finlay Gillies and Andy Kirkland spending time in the sin-bin.
“The key to our defeat was our own indiscipline. We played the game for twenty minutes with fourteen men. That allowed them to steal territory and put us under pressure. We gave away some very stupid penalties.
“I don’t think our forwards got going quickly and hard enough in the first half . It’s frustrating. We’ve had some good away form and we were hoping to capitalise on it at Mansfield Park.” said Laverie.
But the other side of the argument was Hawick’s tenacious defence. The Greens may have a lightweight pack which struggles at scrum time but their mobility and creativity provide another approach to the game.
“We’re not the biggest set of forwards. But the work they do around the rest of the park makes up for that. We have to play more rugby than other teams. But that suits us because we’ve got a lot of good rugby players in the team and we seem to score a lot of tries through that.” suggested the Hawick coach, Nikki Walker.
Hawks led 14-12 at the break through a clever try by their skilful scrum half Paddy Boyer and three penalty goals from stand-off Gregor Hunter to tries for Hawick by hooker Lindsay Gibson and scrum half Sean Goodfellow and a conversion by stand-off Lee Armstrong.
Two penalties by Armstrong to one by Hunter restored the lead for Hawick who then extended their advantage with a try by full back Ally Weir from slick backline handling, Hawks replying with a try from a driving maul by Gillies only for the failed conversion to deny them victory.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here