Published: Friday, 1st February, 2008 12:30
Just a bonus was missing for Peebles
By H.L. Parker
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Peebles 27, Morgan Academy FP 5
Neil Cruickshank scoring on the corner for Peebles.
Pic by: John Robertson
SATURDAY’S scoreline at a muddy, wet and windy Gytes may suggest an emphatic victory for the now second-placed home side.
But it was one that lacked that vital ingredient for a team battling for promotion – a bonus point for four tries.
And that despite touchdowns by Neil Cruikshank, Davy Paton and Dan Boughtwood (plus his three conversions and two penalties) which completed the scoring with 20 minutes still to play.
However, Peebles’ failure to cross for that vital fourth try was as much due to a worsening of the strength-sapping conditions in the final quarter as to Morgan’s stuffy defence.
After all, this was the team Peebles scored seven tries against in Dundee in November.
Said former club president and Saturday’s announcer John Cornwall: “Reports of that away game were that we did little in the first half, but came away strongly in the second.
“To some extent we did the same again today.
“Conditions were very much against us,” John went on.
“It was very muddy and clatchy out there and we made mistakes at vital moments. But we’d some good play too.
“It was symptomatic of the way the game went that Morgan’s try came when they were down to 14 men.
“We’d a bonus point for four tries within our grasp but we blew too many chances.
“Hopefully it’ll not cost us dear in the final run-in to the championship.”
In an all-Peebles start to Saturday’s SHE Premier III clash, the lively Alan Smellie featured twice.
Once when the home No 14 combined with Duncan Macdonald and the intruding Donald Anderson below a well-populated Gytes gallery.
And soon after as he and hooker Ryan McConnell exploited Ross McNish’s line-out win by bursting upfield in a move that almost culminated in a Cruikshank try.
Peebles did score only seconds later, however, when drives by Craig Borthwick and David Harvey won Boughtwood an easy seventh-minute penalty, which the Kiwi stroked over.
The Red-and-Whites continued to dominate, but in spite of No 7 Cruikshank frequently catching the eye – on one occasion when his drive released Paton in tandem with both home props Adam Clark and skipper Willie Aitken – Peebles failed to turn their clear superiority into further points.
On the half-hour mark, however, superb handling from their own 22 saw the homesters attack up the right through Cruikshank, Drew Moore, Smellie and Harvey before Anderson, Macdonald and Neil Hogarth threatened on the opposite flank.
Following the replacement of McConnell and Aitken by Keen and Neil Clark respectively, Morgan’s French lock Burel was sinbinned for persistently killing the ball.
Instead of Peebles capitalising on their opponents’ depletion, however, it was Morgan who scored next.
Fijian winger Mo Niunitoga exploited home defensive errors with a 35th-minute unconverted try.
Paradoxically, having failed to make their numerical advantage count, a superb Boughtwood break up the middle for Peebles against their now full-strength visitors brought the diving Cruikshank a try at the left corner.
Kiwi Dan’s sweetly-struck kick put Peebles 10-5 ahead as referee David Crudge, of Hawick PSA, blew for halftime.
And it was the free-scoring Boughtwood who again featured after the break, strong play by Borthwick, Adam Clark and Tig Jocelyn having won Peebles a 48th-minute penalty which their No 10 goaled for a 13-5 home lead.
Five minutes later, with Dale Clancy and Aitken on for Hogarth and Adam Clark, Boughtwood cashed in on a scrum strike against the head with a sparkling solo try at the posts.
The Kiwi’s conversion, incidentally, took his tally in Peebles’ colours to an astonishing 200 points from only 16 league games.
Following Jocelyn’s replacement by Andrew Sangster, Boughtwood’s conversion of a Paton pushover try stretched the home lead to 27-5.
And, after a trademark Neil Clark breenge for the Gytes men, a yellow card for centre Wigham reduced Morgan to 14 men.
But, despite intense home pressure, which included full back Anderson infiltrating the line and Smellie materialising from the opposite wing, Peebles were unable to snatch that elusive bonus point for a fourth try.
Post-match at the Eastgate, Danny van Niekirk was declared Tweed Homes Man of the Match for the visitors.
And scrum half Drew Moore won the Peebles Tweed Homes award for “outstanding grafting in adverse conditions.”
By no means the first time this season the description has fitted the No 9!
Peebles: D.W. Anderson, A. Smellie, D. Macdonald and C. Borthwick, N. Hogarth (D. Clancy 52), D. Boughtwood and A. Moore; W. Aitken captain (N. Clark 28), R. McConnell (T. Keen 28), A. Clark (W. Aitken 52), D. Harvey and R. McNish, T. Jocelyn (A. Sangster 60), N. Cruikshank, D. Paton.
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