HISTORY can be a brutal taskmaster.
You'd have thought a team that has won the Scottish title in three of the last four years would be feeling pretty relaxed about their achievements. Not Melrose. Every time they go to their clubhouse there are banners reminding them of the glory days, and the current generation still have some way to go to match those feats.
As club captain Fraser Thomson pointed out, though, they can take another step down that path tomorrow when they face Heriot's at Goldenacre for this season's title. A win would make it two sets of back-to-back wins in five years and keep them on track for the three-in-a-row that would replicate the great side of 1991 to 1997.
"We've got banners up in our tunnel which celebrates the Scottish champions when we won it three years on the spin, we'd love to emulate that," he said. "To do back-to-back titles is very special and if we can do four in five years then it will be quite a big achievement in the club's history.
"It is a final, so the form book goes out the window and anything can happen. If we can play our game-plan and make as few mistakes as possible then we'll be half way to winning. Heriot's are the in-form team, they finished top of the league and they'll believe that if both teams play as well as they can then they'll get the win. We've got the polar opposite view. It should be a fantastic spectacle and hopefully there will be a lot of people there to watch.
"We realise it's going to be a massive task, but we believe inside our camp that we've got the players and the game plan to win and defend our title. If we manage get over the line to win four titles in five years then that will be a feat that I don't think will be achieved again for quite a while."
After all, if they do manage to claim the title, Melrose will have done it the hard way. They lost to Ayr on the final weekend of the regular season to give themselves the toughest route through the play-offs, starting with a trip to Millbrae to take on the team that had just beaten them on their own patch. They found a way through that with a magnificent late surge but now have to travel to Edinburgh to take on the side that topped the table by a clear 10 points.
"They have been very, very consistent," Thomson admitted. "We've beaten them twice, though, and they've only lost a couple of other games apart from that. They deserve the chance to play the final at home, but fortunately it gives us a chance to defend our title against the best team. So it is a fitting end to the season."
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