KEVIN McKenzie finally makes his district debut this season, the Stirling County hooker displacing his clubmate Rob Cairney in the North and Midlands side to face Edinburgh at Meggetland on Friday night.
McKenzie is joined by fellow Bridgehaugh men Mark McKenzie and Kenny Harper at half back, lock Stewart Hamilton and No.8 Gareth Flockhart, all of whom return to the district side after missing the match against Scottish Exiles at Rubislaw last Sunday.
Flockhart comes in for the luckless Martin Waite, who had a useful match against the Exiles.
Other than the return of the Stirling players and the consequent reversion to the side that played against South, the only change is at right wing where Neil Renton is preferred to Simon Burns. North and Midlands side:
R Shepherd (Melrose); N Renton (Kirkcaldy), P Rouse (Dundee HSFP), A Carruthers (Kirkcaldy), J Kerr (Watsonians); M McKenzie (Stirling County), K Harper (Stirling County); W Anderson (Stirling County), K McKenzie (Stirling County), D Herrington (Kirkcaldy), S Grimes (Watsonians), S Hamilton (Stirling County), D McIvor (Edinburgh Acads) captain, G Flockhart (Stirling County), R Wainwright (West Hartlepool).Replacements: S Burns (Edinburgh Academicals), B Easson (Boroughmuir), M Fraser (Stirling County), M Waite (Edinburgh Academicals), A Penman (Grangemouth), R Cairney (Stirling County).
q LAST night's under-21 inter-district championships - North/Midlands v Scottish Exiles and Edinburgh v South - were postponed because of heavy frost on the back pitch at Murrayfield.
A statement issued by the Scottish Rugby Union said: ``Endeavours were made to find an alternative venue, but without success.
``The international pitch has not been on stand-by for these particular matches.''
The main pitch at Murrayfield, however, will be on stand-by for the senior inter-district championship matches on Friday (North and Midlands v Scottish Exiles) and Sunday (South v Glasgow).
q NEW Zealand wing Jonah Lomu, who dashed England's World Cup dream by scoring four tries in their semi-final clash, has been voted player of the year by the Rugby Writers' Club.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article