STIRLING COUNTY 8
GLASGOW HAWKS 38
AFTER a tough week for Finlay Gillies there was vindication on Saturday afternoon, when his Hawks side ran in six tries in an emphatic victory which restored their credentials as genuine challengers in this season’s Premiership race. Having suffered a serious dent to their collective confidence last week, when Melrose mercilessly punished their inaccuracies at Old Anniesland, Hawks have clearly learned their lesson, and the bandwagon is now well and truly back on the road.
Scores from Josh Henderson, Steven Findlay, Grant Stewart, George Horne, Robert Beattie and Scott Rodgers eclipsed Stirling’s solitary touchdown from Rory Hughes, but the scoreboard does not do justice to Hawks' superiority in this contest when it came to putting together fluid passages of play.
“We are pleased with the result, but there is a lot of things to clean up in our performance, " said Gillies. "We felt we could potentially have had that score-line at half-time if we had been more clinical.”
Those words might sound like the coach was being a bit of a party-pooper given the scale of his team's victory, but Gillies insisted that his tepid analysis was only because he has so much belief in his team. “I know how good these guys are, and collectively how good they can be as a team. I keep saying to them that we are the best-kept secret in this league, and I genuinely believe that. We got nothing out of a game against Melrose which we went into confident and buzzing, and maybe we went into our shell a wee bit – but in the last 20 minutes today we got a bit of our swagger back.”
Hawks were undoubtedly helped by having four players released by Glasgow Warriors this weekend, with Grayson Hart, in particular, standing out as the fulcrum of so much of their attacking intent – but that benefit comes with a downside. "Those guys came down on Thursday, got stuck in, asked lots of questions, and it genuinely felt like they wanted to be there and get involved, but it has been a really tough week personally having to fit them into the team,” Gillies explained. “I’ve got three club internationals playing for my 2nd XV this week, guys like Paddy Bowyer, who was our player of the year two years ago, and our captain Brendan McGroarty, who is on the way back from injury.”
It is the sort of selection headache that plenty of other coaches in the Premiership would love to have, and if Gillies can keep all the nearly-men engaged then it should mean that Hawks have some exciting options available to them when the Warriors are not being as generous in releasing players. Elsewhere, Melrose picked up their third bonus-point victory on the bounce at home to Currie, while Ayr and Watsonians kept the pressure on at the top of the table with narrow victories over Gala and Boroughmuir respectively. Champions Heriot’s finally got their season rolling with an emphatic victory over hapless Hawick.
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