Scottish Premiership round 1 – Edinburgh Accies 28-22 Hawick 🏉

The Greens came up just short in the capital on Saturday , when Edinburgh Accies withstood a last quarter onslaught as Hawick endeavoured to make amends for a disappointing third quarter, when they conceded 2 quick tries. The Accies started the better of the two sides maintaining possession well, and starving the Greens of any front foot ball during the first quarter. However having defended well, they finally conceded a converted try in the 23 minute. This seemed to sting the lads into action and they started to gain some possession and territory, forcing Accies to infringe, and from the resultant penalty Lee Armstrong slotted a penalty to put the Greens on the scoreboard. Then from a penalty kick to the corner, the Greens pack drove to the line allowing Fraser Renwick to touch down. Armstrong was inch perfect with the touchline conversion taking the score to 7-14.

With halftime approaching however, Accies managed to gain field position and drive over for their second try to leave the score at the break 14-10 to the home side. The third quarter saw the Greens lose focus and concede a couple of quick tries, also losing hooker Renwick to a yellow card during this time. The Greens though regrouped and while down to 14 men they built an attack which saw Jae Linton dive over in the corner to reduce the deficit.

After waiting out his 10 minutes in the bin, Renwick rejoined the fray and with parity restored Hawick redoubled their efforts to get something from the game. To their credit Accies withstood the onslaught until the 79th minute when after a lovely passage of play Kirk Ford went over in the corner, to make the scores 28-20. Every point will be vital this season and to secure the loosing bonus point, Bailey Donaldson sent over the sweetest touchline conversion to end the game.

Unfortunately for Hawick, flanker Marcus Brogan suffers an ankle injury which will sideline him for a while, however it was great to see Keenan Gobby step up and show up well in both defence and attack, in his first appearance for the Greens.

Equally, another two new recruits Logan Henry and Matt Atkinson showed up well, and having now had their first taste of Premiership rugby, will be keen to step up again next week, when the Greens host Marr at Mansfield Park.

The Hawick lads will be very keen to get their first win of the new campaign in front of a home crowd.🏉💚