BEN CAIRNS has challenged his Currie Chieftains team to use their gritty 12-24 victory away to Marr as a launch-pad for two big home performances against Heriot’s and Hawick during the next fortnight. A couple of positive results in this matches leading into the break for the November Test window would keep the Malleny Park men in a commanding position in the battle to secure a home play-off semi-final draw at the end of the season. They are currently third in the BT Premiership table behind Ayr on points difference.
The coach admitted that he was slightly frustrated that his side failed to snatch a four try bonus point in this match but pointed out that any sort of win at Fullarton Park is a creditable achievement.
“It is only the second time they have lost at home in two-and-a-half years, and the other time was when Ayr managed to grind out a 6-19 win having played against 14 men for most of the game, so it was never going to be easy,” he said.
“The game followed the sort of pattern we expected. The weather wasn’t great, it rained before and during the match, and on a tight pitch we knew it was going to be very attritional. There was a lot of tight rugby in the first half, and the ball was out of play an awful lot which didn’t suit us. But the game opened up after the break, we managed to keep hold of the ball much better and were able to build pressure.”
“The annoying thing is that we dropped the ball over the line midway through the second half when we were beginning to build up a bit of a head pf steam, so that effectively cost us a bonus point – but, generally, I’m delighted with the attitude and the performance.”
“It maybe wasn’t the free-flowing game we all want to be involved in, but to be successful over the whole season you have to be able to adapt to the conditions. As we get deeper into the winter weather we need to be able to control the set-piece and play the percentages.”
“I said to the players in the changing room after the game that I was really pleased with the performance but it doesn’t mean anything if don’t build on it during the next fortnight. We don’t want to be taking one step forward and two steps back.”
Chieftains took an early lead through a penalty try, Marr struck back to tie the scores at the break. In the second half, a break by the outstanding Tom Gordon set up a score for Ben Robbins, and Callum Mackintosh grounded from a line-out maul to secure the win.