Forrester impressed by new attitude

The win over Boroughmuir sees an end to the ten- week run of BT Premiership games, with a month’s break until the resumption of hostilities interrupted only by the small matter of a BT Cup first round tie against Currie at Millbrae on Friday, November 17.

Going into that break in third spot in the Premiership is a handy place to be and Ayr coach Calum Forrester was considerably happier with the performance than he had been seven days earlier.

He said: “Last weekend we missed around 40 tackles. The attitude of the players which they brought to training this week and then showed in their defensive effort in the first half was great and proved just how much they wanted to make up for that.

“The team got a great lift from keeping them out under a lot of pressure for 40 minutes and it gave us the confidence to put some really good attacking moves together after the break, which led to the tries.”

Captain Pete McCallum pointed out the team’s good second half was built on the defensive effort which kept a clean sheet in the first 40 minutes.

“We really put in a huge amount of work in defence and I think that was what won us the game in the end,” he said.

Going into the final eight matches of the regular season, the target has to be second place and a home tie in the play- offs, Melrose looking uncatchable at the top, but that will only come with consistency.