EK cruise to victory in league opener
Pre-season worries forgotten as Helensburgh beaten
East Kilbride ....... 36 Helensburgh ......... 8
East Kilbride Rugby Club started their league campaign with a win that was as comfortable as it was underwhelming, somehow appropriate at the end of a turbulent summer for the Torrance House outfit.
A lack of warm-up games, losses on the player front to other clubs, a number of guys taking a sabbatical from the game and the impending departure of head coach, Fraser Watt, after this fixture left EK underresourced and under-prepared for the opener.
Fortunately, as last year, Helensburgh were first on the dance card and they are as likely to struggle this season as they did last when they would have been relegated by Christmas had the SRU not restructured the leagues.
Helensburgh looked the part, particularly their big pack, but they had no answer to the home side’s experienced front five who destroyed the ‘Burgh set scrum.
Paul Rosie kept enough in reserve to also lay waste to any opponent unwise enough to take him on with ball in hand, dishing out some ferocious hits.
Such was the home side’s dominance up front that they really should have scored more than the five tries they collected.
Much of the profligacy can be attributed to early season rust, particularly given the aforementioned lack of warm-up games, but many players will know they should still have been quicker in thought and deed and more accurate in their execution of the game’s basics.
Aside from the plus that comes with taking a full five-point haul the main positives were first XV debuts handed to a pair of last year’s juniors, Callum Connelly-Tennock and Ben McLean, the return from shoulder surgery of powerful prop Scott Aitken and a devastating cameo from the bench by the destructive Lewis McFie.
For the record, tries went to Scott Shankie (2), the Beaton brothers, one apiece, and Chris Mclellan. Shankie and Bert Blackwood shared kicking duties.
A much tougher test awaits this Saturday when EK follow the dark roads to North Ayrshire to take on Garnock; an encounter that will reveal far more about East Kilbride’s likely status in the league this season than this opening fixture.
TEAM: Mclellan, Anderson, E Beaton (c), Dalgleish, Rosie, G Blackwood, Irvine, R Beaton, Stott, B Blackwood, Connelly-Tennock, Shankie, Donnachie, Murray, Greenfield.
Replacements: S Aitken, McLean, McFie, Ellison.
●Meanwhile, the second team opened their account by taking the points at Hillhead in bizarre circumstance. ‘Bizarre’ as the home team won the game 58-5 yet had already forfeited the contest as they only had 12 players, one fewer than EK. Captain Patrick Quigg scored the EK try.