Borderers’ revenge
Greenyards side triumph over Millbrae men at Murrayfield seven days after Premiership title loss
MELROSE gained a fair measure of revenge after their loss to Ayr in the Premiership final last weekend by winning the BT Cup at Murrayfield yesterday, showing a great deal of character to claim the game in its closing moments.
The Borders side fell behind in the first minute, and trailed again with an hour on the clock. In similar circumstances seven days earlier they were unable to mount a fightback, but this time they were sharper and more incisive, drawing level with 15 minutes to play, then claiming a dramatic winner through Nyle Godsmark just a couple of minutes from time.
The players were also more confident this time, according to Melrose coach Rob Chrystie. “It’s been a long week and there has been a lot of emotion, which we saw in the performance – which wasn’t the prettiest,” he said. “But the want and the desire was definitely there.
“If you look at the way Ayr are, you do generally score quite a lot of tries in the last 20 minutes if you can keep in touch. It was exactly the same when we played them at the Greenyards in the league, where we ended up winning fairly comfortably on the scoreboard, but it did take 70 minutes to get that gap.”
Ayr were the livelier side for a lot of the match – more fluent, more creative, and more clinical too at times. After going ahead very early on, they had a lot of selfbelief, too, but they were not as dominant at the breakdown as they had been in the league final, and found it hard to deal with Melrose’s driving line-outs. We certainly created more opportunities today,” Ayr coach Calum Forrester said. “We just weren’t accurate enough when we got to that final third. And Melrose disrupted the breakdown very well, so fair play to them.”
Ayr got off to a sensational start when Danny McCluskey scored in the first minute. Melrose failed to deal with the kick-off, Ayr seized possession in midfield, and when the ball went out to the right Pete McCallum was there to draw the remaining defenders and put McCluskey in over in the corner.
Melrose’s line-out drive has been a potent weapon this season and they drew level after 18 minutes when Grant Runciman touched down after a penalty was kicked to touch. Jason Baggott missed the conversion, as Frazier Climo had done after the Ayr try, but the Melrose stand-off put his team ahead with a 30th-minute penalty from the 10-metre line. Climo levelled two minutes later, however, and the score was still tied at 8-8 at half-time.
Another Baggott penalty put the Borderers ahead three minutes into the second half, but they failed to deal cleanly with the restart, twice having kicks charged down. Ayr failed to capitalise on those errors, being held up over the try line, but they soon regained the lead. Some slack defending allowed scrum-half David Armstrong to break the first line of defence, and his pop-up pass allowed Will Bordill to sprint clear of the remaining cover. Climo converted to give his team a four-point lead, then midway through the half added a penalty.
Melrose had responded by then with a reshuffle of their back line, bringing on scrum-half Murdo McAndrew in place of Baggott, and moving Colvine to the wing and Craig Jackson from inside centre to fly-half. With quarter of an hour to go, McAndrew took advantage of some broken play to race up the right wing and draw the last defender before putting George Taylor in for his team’s second try. Jackson converted to make it 18-18, and raise the prospect of extra time – something last seen in the final four years ago when the same teams were involved, with Ayr eventually winning.
But Melrose had the bit between their teeth, and got the winner with two minutes to go. A forward drive was held up between the posts, but only after Ayr had committed extra numbers to halt it. That allowed McAndrew to switch play to the left, where Craig Jackson took play on then gave the scoring pass to Godsmark.