Good win for Ayr after shaky start
Published 27 Sep 2010 09:30
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Scottish Hydro-Electric Premier One - Ayr 49 Selkirk 14
THEIR bus might have cut it a bit fine getting to Millbrae but there was nothing tardy about the way Selkirk set about Ayr in the first 10 minutes of this Premier 1 clash which marked the halfway point in the first tranch of 11 games before the league splits.
In their face, harassing and sniping, they forced the home side into errors, three resulting in penalties which David Cassidy gratefully banged over from progressively difficult distances, the first from 25 metres just to get his eye in, then from the 10 metre line and the third from a bit further away than that.
It all stopped there for Selkirk though as Ayr suddenly woke up, slotted a Mark Bennett penalty then got in a massive driving maul and asserted themselves in a way Selkirk had little way of dealing with for the rest of the game.
A series of scrums on the Selkirk line then an Ayr line out resulted in Jonno Crossan driving over from the maul. Ayr were one point adrift after quarter of an hour and eight minutes later, center Richard McCallum started a move inside his own twenty two, great handling took play to the Selkirk red zone and Bennett offloaded to McCallum to finish the job he had started to take Ayr into the lead.
Selkirk were desperately trying to get back on terms and Andrew Renwick, Neil Darling and Simon Willett all got a bit of momentum into the Selkirk game but it was spasmodic and when Ayr struck again on the half hour, it was almost over from there on in. Try number three came from a line out steal by Andy Dunlop, Crossan carried it on and Bennett was again the provider for Robbie Fergusson to go in for his first try for Ayr.
Fergusson was the creator a few minutes later when he intercepted, broke, switched to McCallum who returned the earlier compliment and put Bennett in for the bonus point try with three minutes to go to the break.
At 25-9 down, it was now or never for Selkirk and they came out all guns blazing in the second half and when Darren Clapperton sliced through the Ayr defence for the try, a glimmer of hope appeared for the visitors but that was soon extinguished when Keith Conor was binned, Ayr powered a scrum and Glen Tippett was on AJ MacFarlane’s elbow to muscle over. Selkirk stood big then for twenty minutes, putting in several try saving tackles until eventually after seventy minutes the dam burst.
Scott Nimmo and Dean Stewart set up the field position, McCallum broke the defence and his superb offload again put Bennett over this time for his hat trick and with three minutes to go a rampant Ayr back division again mesmerised the Selkrk defence for Jamie Hunter to score in his final appearance for the Millbrae side before moving to London to pursue his career.
That win takes Ayr back to the top of Premier 1, Hawks and Boroughmuir both having lost but there was something equally significant about this win for Ayr.
There was a point in the second half when there was only one overseas player, Dean Stewart on the field for Ayr, a fact which is a serious slap in the face for those who still sneeringly refer to Ayr as having a ‘Foreign Legion’ in their ranks. The emergence of talents like Mark Bennett and Robbie Fergusson alongside Richard McCallum with his cousin Peter who came on at flanker for twenty minutes showed just how the local young talent is beginning to flourish.
“This is the culmination of a lot of work with the youngsters at Millbrae over a long period of time,” said Director of Rugby Jock Craig “and it must have given huge satisfaction to the youth coaches to see the talent they have nurtured coming through to play at the top level.”
Not only did they play in a Premier 1 match but particularly Bennett and Fergusson showed exceptional skill and maturity, Bennett claiming the man of the match award, surely a record for a seventeen year old. With the likes of Cammy Taylor, Andy Wilson and Mark Stewart in the backs and Damien Kelly, Nick Cox, Stephen Adair, Rob Colhoun and Paul Burke among the forwards sidelined with injury, this made the performance against Selkirk, at times in the second half a spectacle which drew heaps of praise from as astute a judge as John Rutherford, all the more meaningful for Ayr.
They travel to Meggetland to take on Boroughmuir on Saturday to face a side smarting form the reverse at Currie but with the young guns challenging for a place in the side, there is no shortage of competition for the starting line-up.
AYR: Grant Anderson; Robbie Fergusson, Mark Bennett, Richard McCallum, Steven Manning; Ross Curle, AJ MacFarlane; Gordon Reid, Stewart Fenwick, Andy Kelly, Dean Stewart, Scott Nimmo, Jonno Crossan, Andy Dunlop, Glen Tippett. Subs: Jenz Robinson, Julian Rae, Peter McCallum, Johnny McClung, Jamie Hunter.
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