Lasswade 28

Peebles 15

Allan Beveridge at Hawthornden

ON an afternoon which was almost perfect for running rugby, Peebles came second in a National League Two match against newly promoted Lasswade.

Peebles played badly at times and made too many errors.

It could have been so much different after a promising start.

Greg Raeburn for Peebles and Andy Bell for Lasswade exchanged early penalties before Jamie Menzies scored the first try for the visitors after some good pressure by the forwards.

Raeburn added the conversion.

And Peebles should have gone further in front a few minutes later as Lasswade full back Nial Gray failed to find touch with a clearance kick, which was picked up by Peebles winger James King.

He and scrum half Murray Johnston exchanged passes up that right hand side before the latter was bundled into touch on the corner flag.

Lasswade won the line out and cleared their lines.

If Johnstone had scored that may have been too much of a mountain for the home team to climb.

For the rest of the first half Peebles were under pressure.

Lasswade's forwards were robust in close quarter attacks, difficult to stop in the driving mauls and also difficult to stop in the set scrums.

On the half hour the home side drew level when once again a forward drive inside the Peebles 22 was well executed and Lasswade drove Peebles back into their in goal area for a try.

From the restart, the Midlothian team scored again.

Peebles were penalised almost immediately for a front row infringement and Bell added another three points.

Before the half time whistle the same player added another penalty from inside the Peebles 22 to make the score 16 - 10.

If that was not bad enough, in time added on in that first half the Lasswade right winger Arran Thomas took a pass inside his own half, to step inside the Peebles defence and avoided three tackles to score under the Peebles posts. Bell again added the extras and Peebles found themselves 23-10 down.

At the start of the second period Peebles were again going well.

Callum Anderson had a couple of nice breaks and he took play to the home team 22.

At that point the Lasswade kicker Bell was yellow carded, however the 14 remaining players rallied once again.

They kept possession in the forwards for long periods which frustrated the players.

And Peebles' woes worsened in the 56th minute as Peebles hooker Ryan Stewart was red carded for allegedly speaking back to the referee. Lasswade added to their tally in the 63rd minute when winger Thomas doubled his total for the day when he scored in the corner.

Peebles hit back almost immediately when good passing between Raeburn, Murray Brown and Callum Anderson resulted in King scoring wide on the right.

But Raeburn injured himself in attempting the conversion.

It was one of those days when nothing went to plan.

There were too many errors with attacking players loosing the ball, knock ons, forward and dropped passes and a number of missed tackles.

However, players and teams are allowed bad days and hopefully that was it for Peebles.