Haddington 13 v GHA 17
Haddington’s fifth defeat at home this season ended any slim hopes the Club had of snatching one of the promotion spots this season. A minute’s silence before kick-off was observed by the players and supporters in memory of Haddington RFC stalwarts, Jack Peat and David Birrell, who both passed away recently.
Haddington had the wind at their backs in the first half and quickly used it to their advantage by putting GHA under early pressure. A loose kick was fielded by Graham Dykes and his strong run created problems before the ball was shipped wide to flanker, Paddy Brown to touch down for a well-deserved lead after only 3 minutes. Jamie Peters missed the difficult conversion but the Scarlets were 5 – 0 to the good and looking dangerous with ball-in-hand and running at GHA. Sadly, for all the territory and possession Haddington enjoyed in the opening period, they failed to add the all-important points to the scoreboard and having soaked up all the pressure, GHA began to grow in confidence and had Haddington scrambling to cover the first real threat to the home line after 20 minutes.
Haddington continued to look dangerous with early ball to wingers, Dykes and Watt, who threatened to cut open the visitors at times, however, as the half developed, poor decision making and wayward passes crept in to Haddington’s game and proved to be the home side’s undoing in a frustrating first half. Peters added a penalty on the stroke of half time to increase Haddington’s lead to 8 –0 but with a strengthening wind in GHA’s favour second half, an 8 point lead looked precarious.
Half Time: Haddington 8 – GHA 0
With only 10 minutes of the second half played the Glasgow side were right back in it with an opportunist try from half way. GHA went blind from a scrum and whilst Haddington had numbers to defend it they either fell off the tackle or took the wrong man, allowing GHA the momentum to offload to support runners and snatch a vital early try. The conversion was missed. 8 – 5.
Haddington kept the ball well for periods into the wind but crucial errors were still proving costly as players tried to force things under pressure. GHA benefited from Haddington’s misdemeanours and added a second score midway through the half from a turnover ball. This time the conversion was added to put GHA ahead for the first time at 12 –8.
As the clock ticked down, Haddington showed what they can produce when they play at pace and some great interplay between forwards and backs took play from the Haddington 22 to within 5 metres of the GHA goal-line only for a visiting player to cynically boot the ball away to stop a certain score. He was rightly shown a yellow card but more importantly stopped Haddington from scoring at a key moment. Thankfully his actions didn’t go unpunished as the Scarlets scored soon after through Neil Watt who managed to find space outside his marker to touch down. The conversion was missed but Haddington looked to have got out of jail at 13 –12 with only minutes remaining. Surprisingly, it seemed that it was going to be the home side who were going to add to their tally further when winger Callum Cockburn brushed aside several tacklers to only just be kept out by the last GHA defender as the try-line loomed.
The home side were stunned moments later though with the last play of the game. The GHA scrum-half was allowed acres of space to run into as Haddington’s defence was posted missing and although he was tackled near to the Haddington line he managed to slip a clever ball inside for the supporting player to score a dramatic try at the death. The referee blew for time after the conversion went wide and Haddington knew they’d let yet another win slip from their grasp in disappointing fashion.
The frustration was felt by everyone knowing that any faint hopes of promotion had now gone but with a quarter-final place up for grabs against West of Scotland in the Cup in a few weeks, the players will know they have a chance to redeem themselves against Premier One opponents.
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