News after the break. 08/11/2010

Perthshire 10 Ayr 57

It was a homecoming of sorts for Ayr’s captain as the Millbrae crew headed for North Inch and Skippy’s first Scottish club, Perthshire. The first round of the pool section of the Scottish Cup was never, in theory, going to present Ayr with their toughest task of the season but the Premier 3 outfit had made Melrose sweat last season before the Greenyards side finally got the win, only to fall at the final Murrayfield hurdle to you-know-who.

In the end Ayr ran out comfortable 57-10 winners but all credit to the home side, they made Skippy’s troops work for their points and not only did hey show enormous guts in defence but when they did get the ball, they showed some delightful touches, their try coming from a particularly skilful piece of play.
“Perthshire have some very good players and the way they defended heroically made it a pretty good work out for our side” said Ayr assistant coach Peter Laverie. “We had set targets after what happened at Currie last week where we have to admit to being a bit complacent and in terms of our breakdown play and go-forward we did what we set out to do. We had a full side out and we could have scored more points but all credit to Perthshire, they didn’t make it easy for us at all and when you look at how some of the other Premier 1 sides fared against Premier 3 opposition, we have to be happy with that scoreline.”

Ayr’s points had come from tries by Scott Forrest, Grant Anderson, Jono Crossan, Andy Wilson, Cammy Taylor and a beauty of a solo effort from Anderson to notch his second. Frazier Climo landed three out of the six conversion attempts then AJ MacFarlane, Richard McCallum and Climo had second half tries with Climo converting the lot but Perthshire’s try by Erlend Oag was probably the pick of the bunch. Graeme Clow converted that one to add to his earlier penalty and Ayr collected the bonus point to go into the new year with Dunfermline and GHA to play to qualify from Premier Cup Pool B to the quarter finals in their defence of the trophy.
“Everybody had the chance to put last week behind them” continued Laverie “and they did that and with Frazier Climo working back to match fitness and Grant Anderson in particular looking really dangerous, we are coming back to form and will have players coming back as well at just the right time.”

The fixtures for the championship play offs, imaginatively titled Premier A –Saatchi and Saatchi couldn’t have come up with a better one than that!-are now in the public domain which means the club, supporters and anyone else involved can start planning their second half of the season.

The eight teams in the championship play offs will carry forward the points they had after eleven games in the opening section so Ayr will be in third spot behind Hawks and Melrose. The first match is on Saturday first November 13th at Millbrae against Dundee HSFP with a 2.45pm kick off, Scotland having a wee joust scheduled with New Zealand at 5.15. On November 20th, Hawks come to Millbrae, this time with a 12 noon kick off since the international side will have dusted themselves off after the AB encounter to take on South Africa. The following week Ayr are faced with what will be the most significant match of the season so far when they travel to Melrose with a 12 noon kick off since Scotland will be playing Samoa in Aberdeen at 2.30 that afternoon and in order to give themselves the best possible chance,
Ayr will travel down the night before for this one given the early kickoff .
Ayr then face Currie at Millbrae on December 4th with a 2pm kick off so with Currie, Melrose, Hawks and Ayr all in opposition over that period as well, the league could well be decided before Christmas and indeed before Ayr, Currie and Melrose embark on their British and Irish Cup campaigns on December 11th although not in the opinion of Peter Laverie who figured that teams would pick each other off resulting in a thrilling climax in 2011.

Finally, the re-draft of the pro players from Premier B to Premier A sees Ayr with Ed Kalman who put in some hefty shifts for Ayr last season, Al Kellock and Bernie Stortoni. I watched big Al put in a very handy fifty minutes on his return from four months injury for Glasgow against Aironi on Friday night but the victorious Scotland skipper in the two Argentina Tests in the summer looked as though a couple of matches to get him up to speed would do no harm so outings at Millbrae against Dundee and Hawks? Could be interesting!