Glencoe rugby siblings on international duty
It was a big weekend for the rugby daft Nelson family, with two members on international duty.
Helen and Robbie Nelson, together with sister and fellow internationalist, Bryony, all grew up in Glencoe.
On Friday night, stand-off Helen, who plays her rugby these days for Montpellier, and her Scottish women team-mates took on Italy at Scotstoun in Glasgow.
Earlier that afternoon Currie Chieftains centre Robbie took the pitch at Gala RFC’s Netherdale ground in the Borders to win his fourth cap for the Scotland Club XV side that faced Ireland.
Respective
Unfortunately neither of the Nelson siblings tasted victory in their respective matches with the women’s side defeated 7-28, while the club XV went down 9-23.
In the women’s international played on front of a 1,500-strong crowd, the vis- itors appeared much sharper, running in three second-half tries, despite a 10-minute spell with two players in the sin bin.
Scotland did enjoy large spells of possession and territory after the break but a resolute Italian defence gave little away.
As the game progressed, Scotland started to dominate in the scrum and the hosts opted to scrum the Italians in their 22 when kickable penalties were on offer with the scores at 7-14 to the visitors in the second half.
But a late breakaway try by Italy and then a score bang on 80 minutes put the game beyond Scotland’s reach.
Scotland’s points came from a try by lock Sarah Bonar in the first half, with hooker Lana Skeldon slotting the conversion which levelled the scores at half-time.
Speaking afterwards, Scotland head coach Shade Munro commented: ‘Pretty disappointed to have lost in the manner that we did. Having said that, we played well in the first half.
‘We defended extremely well. We were on our own line for about 20 minutes I think, so in terms of our defence and the way that we played against Italy, the first in November, is really encouraging.
Vary
‘We need to be able to vary our game a wee bit more than we did. At the end, we ran out of steam and the Italians’ class told in the end.
‘I think the score was a bit unfair given the huge effort that went in. They did deserve to win but that doesn’t detract from the fact that we put in a really big effort.’
In the Club XV match, the host’s points came via two penalties from the boot of stand-off Gregor Hunter and another from full-back Paddy Dewhirst.