Meanwhile, Hawick’s Graham Hogg was hardly punching the air with delight, but conceded that he was happy enough to bank the two bonus-points – especially as other scores in the bottom half of the Arnold Clark Premiership table had gone his team’s way – following a whirlwind start from the hosts.

“After 10 minutes, with the way that they were throwing the ball about, and we know that they are a dangerous side when they get into that sort of frame of mind, if you had offered me two points from this game at that stage I would have taken your hand off,” he said. “So, fair play to our boys for sticking in the fight because that is something we have challenged this group with after we disintegrated at Glasgow Hawks a few weeks ago.

“Individual errors probably cost us at key times, along with our restarts which, when I think back, at least four of their five tries came from restart pressure. So, we couldn’t back up something positive with another positive, which meant we were always chasing the game really.

“Hopefully we’ll look back at this when the dust settles and say that was two good points gained on the road, but I think we should also be challenging ourselves to want and expect more of game like this, which was there to be won if we’d made a few more things go our way.

Watsonians opened the scoring inside five minutes with Dom Coetzer making the initial incision running a tight line straight off a ruck in the middle of the park, and after Watsonians opted to stick it up the jumper from an offside line penalty bang in front of the posts, loose-head prop Donald Voas rumbled over, with Harry Clark adding the extras.

Hawick broke out of their 22 with a hack ahead of a loose ball and an excellent chase by the impressive second-row Sam Byrd and teenage winger Connor McLeod, which pressurised Watsonians into a breakdown penalty that the Borderers kicked to the corner, which set up the score for Shawn Muir (fresh off the bench) via a trick-throw to the front of the line-out.

Watsonians responded almost immediately, with a moment of magic from Harry Fisher, who showed Maradona-esque  footballing skills to chip a loose pass to his feet up into his own hands without breaking stride, then sent Coetzer over with a well-timed pass, and the hosts struck again just after the half hour mark when Clark intercepted Jerry Blyth-Lafferty loose-head offload then kicked ahead which Andy McLean chased down and eventually gathered to score

Hawick bit back before the break with a long passage of continuity play which eventually led to McLeod scurrying over on the right, with Watsonians reduced to 14 men for the next 10 minutes at that point after Luis Ball was yellow-carded from an upright challenge onByrd during the build-up the score, and he can shake his head and shrug his shoulders at the injustice of it all day long but the fact of the matter is that he put the opposition’s best player up to that point out of the game with a clearly illegal challenge.

Watsonians secured the four-try bonus point after 11 minutes of the second half, with Harry Jackaman getting the ball down at the back of a powerful line-out maul, and they looked set to score again a few minutes later when McLean launched a counter from deep and sent Clark on a gallop to the line, only for hooker Blyth-Lafferty to show the pace of a winger to get back an make the try-saving tackle.

Instead, it was Hawick who scored next, to make sure the contest was very much alive and kicking going into the final quarter, with combative replacement scrum-half Gareth Welsh propelling himself over from close range after a period of Greens pressure on the Watsonians line. Zach Lewis clipped over the extras to make it a five-point game.

That trusty Watsonians line-out maul struck again a few minutes later, with Boyd Cooper the scorer this time, but the home team just couldn’t shake off tenacious Hawick, and a try from powerhouse centre Andrew Mitchell with six-minutes to go ensured that the Borderers headed back down the A7 with two bonus points to show for a Saturday afternoon of hard graft.

 

Teams –

Watsonians: D Coetzer; H Fisher (H Widdowson 46), R Kerr, H Clark, L MacPherson; A McLean, M Scot (A McKenzie 55)t; D Voas, M Pritchard (B Cooper 41), C Lamberton (O Blyth-Lafferty 41), C Lindsay, L Ball (F Ronnie 51), K Van Niekirk, S Allison (F Stewart 67), H Jackaman.

Hawick: C Welsh; S McMichan (O Gray 52), A Mitchell, G Huggan (B Jardine 76), C McLeod; K Brunton (G Welsh 55), Z Lewis; C Crawley (S Muir 19), J Blyth-Lafferty, N Little, H Donaldson, S Byrd (T Overson 41), F Renwick, M Swailes (W Donaldson, 76), C Sutherland. 

Referee: Rob McDowell

 

Scorers –

Watsonians: Tries: Voas, Coetzer, McLean, Jackaman, Cooper; Con: Clark 3

Hawick: Tries: Muir, McLeod, G Welsh, Mitchell; Cons: Lewis 3.

Scoring sequence (Watsonians first): 5-0; 7-0; 7-5; 12-5; 17-5; 19-5; 19-10; 19-12 (h-t) 24-12; 24-17; 24-19; 29-19; 31-19; 31-24; 31-26.

 

Yellow cards –

Watsonians: Ball (40 mins)

 

Man-of-the-Match: Hawick second-row Sam Byrd was a front-runner up until he was banjo-d out of the game, so Watsonians No 8 Harry Jackaman edges it for a tenacious all-round showing.

Talking point: It takes 21 minutes and 17 seconds to drive from Malleny Park to Myreside at around 2.30pm on a Saturday afternoon in mid-October. Which is useful to know if you are ever reporting on an Arnold Clark Men’s Premiership rugby match for The Offside Line and only figure out that you have gone to the wrong game when you see arrive at the Currie Chieftains stand to be greeted by the unmistakable sight of Lewis Stuart sitting in the press box.