Colts vs Carnegie M3s

Watsonians Colts vs Dunfermline Carnegie

The past week had seen the Colts turn on the style, beating Edinburgh Uni 7-2, with a Hat-trick from Murray Cannon and goals from Wood, Raez, Tandon and Biffa (once again lethal from one meter).

For this Saturdays match we would have to line ourselves up against Carnegie M3s. Carnegie and ourselves had similar fortunes this season, with only two points separating the sides in the league table and a very similar goal difference.

A delayed pushback had four of the schools 2nd eleven players facing a battle against both time and swelling rugby crowds, worming their way towards a doomed Murryfield.

With only seconds to spare Captain Waugh’s pre-match talk turned from telling the 9 man squad to ‘park the bus’, to the now 13 man team to ‘get straight at them’

The whistle went and we were underway.

It was pretty even from the start. Both teams were trying to press for an early goal, but with Dave Baring back marshaling the defence we were holding strong. Our stand-in keeper, Rob Powell was called upon to make a couple of reaction saves.

The Colts had a couple of good attacking moves in the first half and the Carnegie keeper did as well as his opposite number and the scorecard would remain blank for the first half.

0-0

The halftime talk would focus on not getting drawn into a physical match and that we were not entitled to just win this game, it was going to take a lot of effort to break this side down.

Second half and away we went. Again both sides were up for some attacking hockey. The center of the park had become a bit of a stalemate with Woody showing his calm style of dribbling while on the ball and Waugh putting in some, lets just call them ‘solid’ tackles.
It was down the flanks that this game would be won or lost. Raez was having quite the game down the left. Getting forward whenever possible and not letting anyone pass, even when flattened to the turf.

After number of short corners we would finally convert. A couple of straight strikes had come close, so now was the time to switch it up and bamboozle the runners. A quick slip left and then to the injector, left the defenders flat footed. Waugh was then able to square to the back post for Danny Tandon to tap in.

1-0

We now needed to hold strong and not let our narrow lead slip. The defence were again doing a great job of stalling out attack after attack. A Carnegie 4 on 3 gave them a break into our D. Rob came out looking big, but a glancing block with the kicker was not enough to keep the bobbling ball out of our goal.

1-1

We would push hard for the last 5 minutes but not get the winner we craved. All in all a draw was probably a fair result. However we are more than looking forward to inviting Carnegie to Tipperlinn for the return leg.

Alex Reaz picked up the Man of the Match award for his tireless work in both defence and attack.

Thanks to Stuart Purves for making the trip to umpire for us.