1stXV lost to Merchiston
650 days since our last outing, back on December 4th 2019, which was also against our old friends from Colinton! A certain symmetry to it all and it was so good to see the boys out on the pitch enjoying playing together once again against other schools. It was lovely to chat to opposition coaches from Merchiston, and renew old friendships again after so long not seeing each other……but enough of this romantic, teary eyed stuff…..there was an actual rugby match that took place this afternoon!
The first two weeks of term had seen this group of boys really rise to the occasion and gel together in to what will be, without doubt, a very strong, powerful and exciting side who play a very attractive style of rugby; indeed, the wingers today touched the ball more times than a prep school winger would normally do and this all bodes well for the challenges ahead.
To be honest, to lose by the one try in 12, considering it was our first game of the season and Merchiston’s third, does not matter; the fact that two of the team were unable to play due to waiting for results of PCR tests to come back just allowed others to step up and perform really impressively. At the end of the day, as our lead slowly disappeared in the final minutes, we had just run out of the steam and had nothing left in the tank – no shame in that at this early stage of the season, and the lessons we will have learned will allow us to be more clinical when we are in the ‘red zone’ and not spurn try scoring opportunities which we were guilty of a few times during what was a very dominant first half performance where we had most of the possession and territory but did not quite make it count as we should have. Still early days!
During that first half, we really did dominate up front, going through the phases again and again, looking after the ball, and then moving it wide to our strong runners in the backs. Merchiston found it very hard to defend, and we soon went three tries up playing some really positive rugby, making good decisions and this allowed us to stretch their defence and exploit the inevitable holes that appeared. As I said, we left two or three tries out there, giving away silly penalties just yards from the try line, but we shall be more clinical next time and learn from that as the game should have been put to bed at half time. As it was, we began to tire in the heat during the second half and perhaps became just a little too predictable, winning ruck after ruck and recycling the ball impressively, and moving the ball wide through the hands but lacking the variety of the first half, and this allowed Merchiston to drift and defend more easily as we tired: we needed to be more inventive, trying some of the moves we have worked on, the forwards needed to run off the shoulders of the fly half and inside centre, looking to carry the ball in the wider channels, but when you get tired, you stop thinking and just go from ruck to ruck! Also, perhaps the scrum half could have gone himself from the breakdown, an area we dominated throughout the game? These are all nit picking in what was a fine team performance and as Roddy Deans, the Merchiston Head of Rugby said afterwards, we were the better team and played the better rugby, but sometimes that is not enough, especially after 18 months without a game!
So many positives, so many learnings and so much to look forward to over the coming weeks, and with two further games with Merchiston to come, I know we shall look forward to meeting them again, this time with some rugby under our belts. Very well played, boys – it really is great to be back!
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