Helensburgh Advertiser | Sport | Burgh win Paisley Cup

Friday, 25th July, 2008

Published: Thursday, 24th April, 2008 10:00

Burgh win Paisley Cup

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JUBILANT: Cup winners.

THE U15s won the inaugural Paisley Cup in a hard fought tournament against quality opposition on Sunday.

Their opening match was against Strathaven, whom they had beaten earlier this year in a league match.

Each match was a straight 20 minutes without a break, so it was essential to get going quickly.

This they did, out-muscling the Strathaven forwards and retaining much of the possession and territory to running in four tries from Simmons, Farren, Costin and Melbourne.

Burgh then faced an energetic, fiery Clydebank team who they had also beaten in the league and they made it a second win with tries from McGuire and Farren.

It seemed likely the crunch match would be Helensburgh versus Paisley but before that they had to beat Moffat.

Moffatt were very well drilled and played their set pieces very well, driving Helensburgh back in the scrum and stealing line out possession.

For the first several phases it looked as though Helensburgh must soon break but the defence held up with excellent tackling.

Helensburgh held their nerve and recycled play among the forwards til eventually the defence cracked and the stalemate was broken by a try from Young.

A second try from MacFarlane earened some breathing space in a very tight game, but from the restart Moffatt breached the Burgh line. They pressed for the leveller but ran out of time.

The match against Paisley had some added spice following a training match the previous weekend when Paisley beat Helensburgh with a last minute controversial try.

The game started with Helensburgh largely on the back foot, defending with determination and clearing their lines by kicks into the Paisley half.

The tactic initially used to great effect by Paisley was the quick penalty and desperate measures were required to defend this. But given the chance, Helensburgh took it and punted the ball out of defence, retained possession rattling the Paisley defence with their own quick starts.

And in the last move of the match, Melbourne blitzed in from close range from just such a situation to score the winning try.

HELENSBURGH U15S: B Young, S Richardson, P Farren, J McKelvie, M Weir, D Campbell, C Costin, C Higgins, T Hughes, T McGuire, S Simmons, K Fullwood, R Malcolm, A Latham, R McFarlane, D Sterry, C Melbourne, H Watson.

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