Dundee High fall apart in second 45 at Heriot’s

NATIONAL: Defeat to title-chasers sums up struggling Mayfield side’s season

If you project from the first game of the season when Dundee High took on Heriots at Mayfield and went down by 47-24 and see how that has played out, it almost perfectly mirrors where the two sides are now in Tennent’s National 1.

Heriots are second while Dundee are seven behind second-bottom Boroughmuir and 19 behind Ayr.

That gap was apparent at Goldenacre again on Saturday when Heriots cruised to a comfortable 41-10 win, although at 17-3 up at half-time there was still a chance of a Dundee comeback.

Graham Wilson had hit the post with the conversions of tries one and three but slotted Craig Robertson’s strike to give Heriots the half-time lead.

After the break, however, it fell apart for Dundee with only one converted try while Heriots rattled in 24 points.

It was title-chasing stuff in National 2 where Dumfries squeezed a narrow win against Kirkcaldy at Park Farm – just as they had done at Beveridge Park.

There they had won 29-26 but looked to taking this one more comfortably with a 10-0 half-time lead.

Kirkcaldy hauled it right back on the 60-minute mark with an Owen Bonner try and Craig Letham conversion to make it a three-point game, but with eight minutes left Dumfries scorched in for a converted try to deny Kirkcaldy any reward at all as they crashed 17-7.

The top five now read GHK (56 points), Dumfries (55), Peebles (54) and Stewarts Melville (53) – who have a game in hand – then Kirkcaldy. The Fifers have still to face Peebles and GHK in what looks like being the tightest of run-ins.

It was top-of-the-table stuff too at Duffus Park and the omens were an illportent for Howe of Fife with a worrying injury list to contend with, then another coming during warm-up as well as a 20-minute downpour raining on Howe’s style of game.

‘A strong and organised side’ was the verdict of Howe president Chris Reekie after the league leaders won 31-16, with Howe trailing 12-3 at half-time to tries from Gareth Hill and Darren Goodfellow, the second converted by Jack Webster to a penalty by Ian Aitken.

Aitken landed a second penalty after the break with Fraser Clark and Dave Thomas running in tries but Berwick tied up the bonus with tries from Ally Grieve, Ryan Wilson and Catalin Graur.

Howe are now fifth with two games in hand over Greenock Wanderers and Berwick and one over Ardrossan and Lasswade, so if they collect on those outstanding games they could possibly make it up to second spot.

A 39-7 win at Maybole saw Strathmore do a double over Carrick and put them at the top of the bottom half of the National 3 table and seven points adrift of Hillhead Jordanhill.

A brace of tries from Blair Butchart and one each from Jordan Lees and Chris Arbon saw the bonus point sewn up before half-time. Prop Glenn Feighan and Abron ran in second-half scores to take a very comfortable five points back to Inchmacoble.

In National 3 Perthshire picked up two bonus points after down 36-31 to Murrayfield Wanderers.