Linlithgow vs Haddington u15s

Linlithgow U15 55 v Haddington U15 17

The young Scarlets travelled to Linlithgow on Sunday after a three-week break from rugby. Unfortunately, most of the boys started as if they were still in holiday mode because they found themselves 24 – nil down after only 20 minutes, giving themselves a mountain to climb thereafter.

There were again glimpses of the potential amongst the team with forwards, Lorne Black and Nick Stewart, trying their best to take the game to their hosts at every opportunity. Their hard work was eventually rewarded with an excellent try. Black made the initial breenge up the park before setting up field position 5 metres from the home try-line. From the resultant scrum, Jack Hamilton spotting a half gap and dived over to get the first points of the day for the Scarlets. This seemed to galvanise the visitors and a second score soon followed from the restart, narrowing the gap further. A speculative kick out of the Scarlets 22 bounced kindly for centre, Mark Robertson to run 70 metres for a great individual try. The conversion by Harvey Blake brought the score to 24 – 12 and Haddington looked as if they had dusted off the cobwebs and were back in the match, however, Linlithgow had other plans and two quickfire tries before the break took the score to 38 – 12 and the match was effectively over for the visitors.

The Scarlets gave another glimmer of their potential after the break when a strong scrum on the opposition put-in allowed Hamilton to rob his opposite number and when the ball was quickly transferred wide to Zander Ingram, he turned on the after-burners to beat a couple of defenders and score another fine Scarlets try, but yet again, some soft defensive play allowed Linlithgow to finish the match with 3 more tries for a deserved home win.

It’s a tough learning curve for the youngsters this season and if they could learn to defend as a team they certainly have players that can create and finish off moves of their own, so it’s a case of continuing to buckle down and work harder with the coaches each week.