HELENSBURGH Rugby Club head coach Adam Hart says league leaders Newton Stewart’s dominance at the scrum helped them beat Burgh 47-7 at Ardencaple on Saturday.

The Burgh were 21-0 down at half-time, and while the Grizzlies were even with them in most areas of the pitch, the scrum dominance told. And Hart says it’s been a key theme of their season and insisted the final scoreline was not a fair reflection of the match.

He said: “They had three pushover scrum tries against us which takes our tally to over 20 that we’ve conceded over the season.

“And we were struggling to retain our own ball on the scrums. They were dominating it and got quite a lot of penalties off scrums as well. They were just able to clear to safety if they were in their own half.”

A lot of the Burgh’s problems have been down to the lack of a specialist tighthead this season

And with two tightheads at the start of the season being unavailable, it has been tough to train someone up for a specialist position.

Hart added: “The starting front row was okay but there was no specialist tighthead, and we don’t have any specialist tightheads left.

“Liam Flannagan, who got injured at the start of the season, is now our first team coach and Obe [Ignatuis Oberholzer], our big South African prop that we’ve been using, is in the navy and he’s gone away to sea. We’re trying to convert our other players.

“Our other prop Stuart Taylor broke his nose in Tuesday last week in the warm-up, so he’s out for six weeks, which is pretty much till the end of the season.”

And while they had prop replacements on the bench on Saturday, both Jamie Higgins and Phil Farren’s natural positions are second row and back row respectively.

The head coach added: “We had two spare loosehead props on the bench who could cover the position but weren’t tighthead props in Phil Farrley and Jamie Higgins. They’re scrum-trained but they weren’t exactly specialist looseheads coming on either.”

Connor Slader’s score was the highlight of the day from the Burgh perspective, with a well worked set-piece move paying off.

Hart said: “Mike Linzee-Gordon, came on in the second half and made his usual dummy and then was being tackled and managed to flick the ball out the back, and Connor hit a great line off him and went in just under the posts. It was off a lineout as well,it was good for the forwards that their work was rewarded in some way.”