Welcome back to Mansfield. After our wonderful unbeaten double triumph all our Premiership rivals will be keen to be the team to dispossess us of the Bill McLaren Shield and it is Glasgow Hawks who are going to have the first go. Our coaching team have the Hawick squad well prepared and match fit after very challenging pre-season fixtures from which the boys have emerged with great credit. Today we welcome our good friend President Kenny Hamilton, the Hawks team and supporters who have travelled down from Glasgow.
We are now approaching the first two events of our 150th anniversary commemoration. On the morning of our game against Kelso on Saturday 16 September at 11.30 there will be a short ceremony to unveil a mural by renowned mural artist Chris Rutterford on the gable end on the corner of Mansfield Road and Mansfield Crescent. Gus Neilson has done a great deal of work to make this possible. Our first hospitality lunch of the season will be at 12.00 for 12.30 when Poynder Park legend Eric Paxton will do a Q and A and our guest singer is the talented Kenny Spiers. Contact Eileen on 07703575825 to book your place.
Next day, Sunday 17 September at Buccleuch Park, by courtesy of Hawick and Wilton Cricket Club there will be a re-enactment of Hawick’s first ever game against Langholm which took place on the cricket field. The Hawick and Langholm teams will be dressed in the rugby gear of 150 years ago. The club are indebted to Clair Ramage and Liz Parkes for their expertise and guidance and to Mary Beck and her team of sewers who have spent countless hours making the costumes, the materials for which have been generously donated free of charge by Johnstons of Elgin, House of Cheviot and Lovat Mill. Kelso referee Colin Henderson has been our historical adviser on the laws which would be in force when that first game was played on 7 February, 1874 and it is the intention that the over- 35s teams representing Hawick and Langholm will abide by the old laws – at least that is the intention!
Rugby had come to Hawick in those Victorian days as a spin-off when the Hawick cricketers purchased a football to keep themselves fit over the winter and after trying out both the association and rugby union codes opted for the latter as being “manlier and more conducive to the Border character”. For that first ever game, in which my great-grandfather played, Langholm insisted on playing by a copy of the laws which they had sent with the remark “we play no other rules than the enclosed”. They wanted to play with teams of twenty but eventually agreed to fifteen a side. They had in the first ever cross-Border rugby match played twenty-five aside against Carlisle! In these days a try was what it said – it gave a side the opportunity to try to kick a goal. If the goal kick was missed no points were awarded for the touchdown. Langholm actually scored a try but the goal kick went through the posts and over the bar which by the laws Hawick had would have counted but the laws that Langholm had insisted on playing by stated that the goal kick had to go between the posts but under the bar so the game ended nil-nil.
The game was divided into four periods of twenty minutes. The commemoration re-enactment will be just two twenty minute halfs taking into account the possible lack of fitness of the participants! So, on 17 September all roads will lead to the cricket field for the 2.30 kick off. Entry will be by silver collection payable to the man at the gate.
Back to today. Enjoy the game but if you are a Hawks supporter not too much!
