‘It’s a belief thing at Hawick – we don’t know how to win’

0 Hawick’s Guy Graham is stopped in his tracks by Jamie Forbes as the visitors produced a stirring second-half rally at Malleny Park.

CURRIE CHIEFTAINS 32 24

Currie scored five tries and exercised almost complete control for 50 minutes but then lost the plot as Hawick fought back with a late treble of unanswered tries that knocked a big hole in what had seemed to be an unassailable lead.

Ultimately, Hawick could only do enough to earn a rare try bonus point because, as coach George Graham told them in the post-match huddle, they have forgotten how to win games.

“It’s a belief thing, a confidence thing,” he said. “We score another try, get a penalty we win the game. It was that close but we don’t seem to know how to win.”

The statistics back Graham up – ten games played and ten games lost – with Currie the latest to inflict defeat on the Greens despite the lapse that allowed so many late points to be run up against them.

The change in momentum can be traced to the moment soon after Scotland Sevens squad member Harvey Elms was substituted along with a couple of other players. Elms had been running the opposition ragged all afternoon and had just scored the Chieftains fifth try to put them 27 points ahead.

“I thought we controlled the game for the first 50 minutes, not many teams could have lived with us on that first half performance especially,” said Currie coach Ben Cairns.

“That is what we are capable of and I was a bit frustrated by the reaction to us making a few subs at that point.

“It shouldn’t matter if we make two, three or four subs. We should still be able to replicate our form. If we want to go on and win championships and be at the top of the table we need to have strength in depth and we need to trust our subs.

“That’swhyweputthoseboys on – because we trust them. Whether it’s what they have done when they’ve gone on or whether it’s the reaction of the rest of the players thinking ‘we’ve won this’ I’m not sure.”

Currie took the game by the scruff of the neck in the first fewminuteswithelmssupplying the scoring pass for, first, his captain Robbie Nelson and, second, lock Vince Wright to cross the try line.

Hawick tightened up and began to string together a series of attacks without seriously threatening but it was Currie stand-off Jamie Forbes who got the next try, converting it himself and adding a simple penalty to keep the scoreboard ticking over.

Hawick briefly wrested control in midfield and fashioned a sweeping attack that went from one side of the pitch to the other for winger Gary Munro to dive in at the corner.

But Currie had the bonus point before half-time as they pressed from a five metre lineout and flanker Stephen Ainslie came up with the ball after a maul had rolled over the line.

In the second half Elms left a clutch of Hawick players grabbing at fresh air as he sprinted away down the right wing for his team’s fifth try.

Then came the substitutions that disrupted Currie’s flow and Hawick took full advantage with three tries, one after the other by full-back Ali Weir, lock Craig Hamilton, and prop Shaun Muir, but the gap was just too much. The best performance from his side this season was the bullish assessment from Heriot’s coach Phil Smith after watching his charges demolish their hosts at Bridgehaugh, writes Martin Laing.

“That was very good, very enjoyable,” he averred. “The first half was all about our attack and the second was all about our defence.

“Our defence was absolutely rock solid. You can’t always attack and you’ll always have times you have to defend and we did that. But in the first half we were very slick. We got into gear five from the off.

“Some of our tries were real copybook. That was the best we’ve played this season.”

Smith was bang on the money with his analysis. Heriot’s led 26-0 at the interval after a blistering opening 40 minutes that saw a bonus point secured thanks to tries from Michael Liness, Jack Turley, Rory Carmichael and Callum Marshall, three