Cumnock Under 15 Match Report

Stewartry 17 Cumnock Under 15s 19

Following a late cry off from GHA Cumnock were able to arrange a game against Stewartry from Castle Douglas. The conditions were not ideal with strong winds sweeping the park but fortunately the rain largely left the game alone. Both sides fielded weakened teams due to injuries and the holiday weekend and this showed in some of the disjointed play especially in the first half.

Cumnock played into the wind in the first half with the goal of staying in touch until they benefitted from the conditions in the second half. This looked to be working well until in about the 20th minute the conceded a soft converted try when the Stewartry 6 burst through in mid field and scored between the posts. Worse was to come when 5 minutes later a Stewartry player scored a carbon copy unconverted try through slack Cumnock defence.

Cumnock bounced back and live wire scrum half Adam Watt orchestrated his forwards beautifully for a series of drives most notably by Calum Scott who played his best game of the season. Eventually the Mauchline bulldozer Jamie Drummond latched onto a pass and drove 3 players over the line to score. Owen Young showed his usually reliability to slot the conversion making the score 12-7 to Stewartry at half time.

In the second half Cumnock looked to harness the wind with tactical kicking but a determined home side refused to buckle and launched counterattack after attack. This led to a further unconverted and deserved try for Stewartry leaving Cumnock a significant defecit to claw back at 17-7 down. Cumnock showed their usual resilience and started to build pressure. Eventually this led to a further try as Dylan Chidwick received a pass and then showed tremendous pace to run round the Stewartry defence before scoring in the corner.

The final score of the match was sparked off by Andy Houston who burst through before passing to Chidwick who stood his defender up brilliantly before offloading to Houston who ran round the last tackler before touching down. Owen Young was left with a knee trembling final kick to seal the points which he executed with ease.

Cumnock then weathered a final 10 minute assault from Stewartry but stout defence saw them through by the narrowest of margins.

Coach Mark Van Der Leest said after the game,” This probably wasn’t our best performance of the season but it was still good to grab a win at a park where few teams come and win. There were some notable performances from the likes of Rob Drummond, Dylan Chidwick, our half backs Houston and Watt and as usual our number 8 Jamie Drummond. I would also point to some of the defensive heroics especially from Ross Marr who executed 3 very impressive and important tackles to snuff out attacks. We certainly have a lot of work to do as we prepare for our West of Scotland cup final on the 17th of April in Glasgow but the players are up for this.”

Next week Cumnock travel to Whitecraigs for another tough match.