Ayr Rugby Club let it slip against London Scottish

Aug 20 2010 Ayrshire Post (main ed)

A LAST quarter collapse denied Ayr the chance of a morale boosting win before Saturday’s Premier One opener away to Hawick.

The Millbrae men looked pretty good for 50 minutes against London Scottish in their final pre-season warm up and led 22-7.

Then they took the foot off the pedal/ran out of steam/lost concentration/lacked match fitness/ were defensively disorganised/ were short of front line players (circle the one you agree with) and shipped 21 points in half an hour.

That threw away a game which, whatever way you look at it, should have provided a morale boosting win going into the opening Premier One fixture at Mansfield against Hawick on Saturday.

Currie had beaten Scottish 34-13 on Friday night and although coach Simon Amor agreed that it was a slightly stronger and experienced squad who faced Ayr, several of the side were playing together for the first time. It is worth remembering that Scottish will be playing this season in the league below that from which teams are drawn who Ayr will face in the British and Irish Cup.

Having said that, for 50 minutes things looked as good as you could expect at this point of the build-up with the backs sharp, Jamie Hunter doing a good job in the No10 shirt, the pack holding their own at the scrum with the mix of Gordon Reid, Nick Cox Andy Kelly and Stephen Adair a solid front row, giving nothing away in the line out where James Young put in an admirable shift, winning the contact battle as Jono Crossan, Andy Dunlop, Paul Burke and Glen Tippett took control and overall looking solid in defence.

The first 15 minutes saw Ayr at their best and confirmed the potential of young centre Mark Bennett who, having made a couple of half breaks, suddenly turned on the afterburners for a scorching 50 yard burst which set up the field position for Grant Anderson to open the scoring.

Scottish upped the ante in the pack and Glen Tippett collected a yellow card only for Ayr to take the next strike against the head. Unstructured it certainly was in parts and then came the rare sight of AJ MacFarlane having a kick charged down for Lewis Calder, who was fortunate not to have joined Tippett in the bad boys room, to get the touch and with Lee Cholewa converting, Scottish took the lead.

Ayr hit back immediately, Jamie Hunter and Jono Crossan hurtled down the left and when the ball was switched right, Anderson scooted over for his second.

Bennett missed this conversion as he had with the first but both were from the touchline and the narrow miss margin was encouraging from a youngster who practices kicking each week under the eye of Scotland kicking coach Duncan Hodge.

Ayr took that 10-7 lead into the break and four minutes into the second half the Mannings, Steven and Johnny, carved space down the right, the ball was switched infield and Ross Curle held up his pass beautifully to put Paul Burke storming in.

Curle converted and three minutes later Hunter and Manning S combined and Anderson grabbed his hat-trick. Curle was wide with the kick but at 22-7, Ayr should now have been in ‘put them away’ mode.

Not so and this is where the wheels started to, if not come off, certainly wobble alarmingly. A re-jigged Scottish back division suddenly found some cohesion and their pace exposed the Ayr defence alarmingly. Tim Holgate got on the end of a great move set up by James Brown, whose introduction at 10 after half time was hugely influential, and Brown converted.

A dumb fly hack with play about to be stopped presented Scottish with a wrong footed defence which Colman McCarthy exploited with a try in the corner for Brown to add the conversion but with nine minutes left Ayr still couldn’t close out the game.

Scottish were now posing a real every time they had the ball and four minutes from time, McCarthy combined with Holgate to put full back John Berdiss over for Brown’s conversion to complete an excellent half hour’s work for the visitors.

Coach Kenny Murray was philosophical: ‘We were an awful lot better than we were at Gala last week so we are getting to where we want to be.

“Obviously I am disappointed in the final result and I think there was an element of lethargy and mental tiredness about the way we seemed to panic in the final quarter with players playing out of position and the lack of match fitness in some players who hadn’t played a full 80 minutes until this one.

Jono Crossan arrived during the week, Ross Curle, Grant Anderson and Gordon Reid were having their first 80 minutes and we missed influential players like Mark Stewart, Frazier Climo and Damien Kelly.

“There are areas we have to work on but we know that we can play the rugby we want to play but as ever we need to finish off better because we had several chances which went a-begging.”

So it’s off to Hawick in the opening clash of the 2010-11 Premier league campaign. The Greens will be looking to prove that their relegation was only an aberration in the history of a proud club and that they are now back where they believe they belong.

Ayr will have at least a couple of players back and the addition of lock Dean Stewart, brother of Mark, who arrives this week, will give the pack a boost but the squad cannot afford any slip-ups in what will be an intense 11 games after which only the top eight will survive to contest the Premier One title.

Finally, on September 4, Millbrae open their season with a National Bowl tie against Loch Lomond. Old age and in some cases afflictions which cannot be mentioned in a family newspaper have caught up with some of the side forcing the retirement of several weel kent faces.

If you have a pair of boots gathering mould in the back of the cupboard and still fancy a game for fun and the occasional swally, give the club a ring on 01292-441944.