Heriot’s prove they’re the city slickers as Watsonians are beaten in Super6 at last

The Watsonians defence doubles up on Ruairidh Leishman as the Heriot’s back row stands firm. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

In addition to claiming the bragging rights over their city rivals, the hosts offered evidence of the progress they have made after a shaky start to the competition.

Having posted impressive wins in their opening three games, Watsonians went into this encounter as favourites. However, Heriot’s were buoyed by a victory at Stirling and there was an urgency about the way they went about their business that suggested they were desperate to halt the Myreside bandwagon.

The hosts made a blistering start and took the lead in three minutes with a perfectly executed move that saw a penalty booted into touch and the subsequent possession transferred sweetly along the line where Bruce Houston fed Ross Jones who darted in between the sticks. Houston stroked over the conversion, then added a penalty a couple of minutes later as the momentum remained firmly in the home side’s favour.

Watsonians were struggling to gain a foothold in the game and a rare visit to opposition territory yielded a penalty in 19 minutes. Marc Morrison banged over the long-range effort to open his side’s account.

That proved to be the final scoring of the first half although if the hosts had shown a little more composure at key moments, they could have been further ahead at the break.

A mazy run by Harvey Elms on the resumption was the precursor to a brief period of Watsonians pressure. That yielded a penalty which Morrison booted into touch and the ensuing lineout drive ended with Cal Davies coming up just short of the target, but with Steven Longwell on his shoulder to finish the job.

Back came Heriot’s and Stuart Edwards produced a clever pass that sent Robert Kay, inset, over for a try. Houston converted then kicked two further penalties to leave the home side firmly in the driving seat as the game entered the final quarter. And the home stand off added some swagger to a polished performance when he calmly stroked over a neat drop goal to clinch an impressive win.

It was a result that proves the competition is wide open and, with fixtures coming thick and fast, the view in both camps was that there is no time for sides to dwell on the outcome of any single fixture.

“I’m delighted with that win, but I just think there’s so much more that we can get from this squad”, said Heriot’s coach Andrew Kelly. However, despite the impressive nature of the performance, he is not looking beyond next weekend’s trip to meet Ayrshire Bulls.

“That is a good performance, and we need to build on a good performance. I’m not looking any further forward than Ayr – I just want to back this up.”

His Watsonians counterpart Fergus Pringle has only six days to work with his players before they meet Southern Knights on Friday.

“There’s not much to take from this game. We know we were pretty much outplayed in every area. The one thing that went really well was our scrum. We put them under pressure at scrum time. Other than that, there weren’t too many positives. We have to learn from that and go away and put things right and come back stronger.” he added.

Heriot’s: R Jones (captain); R McMichael, R Kay, S Edwards, J Couper (B Evans 61); B Houston, L Wheeldon (A Ball 64); A Nimmo, M Liness (D Hood 63), J Scott (A Bogle 79), R Seydak (F Hastie 61), A Sinclair (L Govenlock 61), R Leishman, J McLean, C Marshall (M Russell 78)

Watsonians: H Elms; L MacPherson, L Berg (D Coetzer 73), D Coetzer (S King 63), R Smith; M Morrison, M Scott (R Cullen 50); H Courtney (T Jeffrey 69), C Davies (captain) (R Graham 63), S Longwell (M Argiro 69), K van Niekerk (H Fisher 64), M Badenhorst, L Ball, C Wilson (K Main 63), S Daly.

Referee: G Ormiston

Scorers: Heriot’s: Tries – Jones, Kay; Cons – Houston 2; Pens – Houston 3; Drop Goal - Houston. Watsonians: Try – Longwell; Pen – Morrison.