Cougars maul Cambus

Dec 17 2008 by Kenny Smith, Rutherglen Reformer

THERE was frustration in the capital for Cambuslang Rugby Club as they went down to a 24-5 defeat to the Royal High Corstorphine Cougars.

Cambus, who have only managed a couple of games since early October, were made to pay for a lack of match practice.

Coach Davie Knox said: “It’s very much a case of frustration for us at the moment. We are improving, with new players coming onto the side, but on Saturday we didn’t perform well enough, and weren’t aggressive enough.

“RHC haven’t really stopped playing and we’ve hardly started lately, so we were about six games behind them, and not playing has made a big difference to us.

“We’ve found with the weather we’ve not been able to do any contact stuff in training.

“They scored a try after a mistake in the first couple of minutes, and by half-time they were 12-0 ahead. We turned round but they got another score to take it to 19-0, and we pulled a score back through Craig Raeside but missed the conversion. They then scored again to make it 24-5.“

Vice-captain Dave Finnigan added: “They were quite a well-drilled unit, and it was quite obvious they had been playing together for quite a while.

“We’ve been stop-start all season, but we’re starting to get things together in training, especially with the new players we’ve had coming in over the last wee while.

“Stuart and Ian Beresford have come back to us, and we’ve had a couple of Irish boys come to us from Strathclyde Uni, but we really need games for everyone so we can grow together as a team.

“We need to get everyone on the park at the same time, which has been quite frustrating.”

Dave pointed out: “Most teams have had games postponed this season, but no one’s had the number of games we’ve had called off.

“You look at the bottom of the table and see Preston Lodge are a place above us, but we’ve got five games in hand over them.

“We really need to start winning games. But now we’ve got a cup tie coming up, it means that if a cup game is postponed, it will take precedence over the league.

“That’s the last thing we want. We want to be playing every Saturday. Last year, I think our last game was on May 12 because of a fixture backlog, and I dread to think when it could be next year!”

This Saturday, Cambus are set to take on Lenzie in the third round of the Scottish Hydro Electric Scottish Cup.

The Glasgow side play in the national league third division, two below Cambus, and sit in eighth place in the league. The local side defeated them 18-6 at the same phase of the tournament last season.

Captain Andy Dick said: “We beat them last year in the same stage of the cup, and hopefully we’ll be able to do the same again this year.

“The game will hopefully go ahead as we just want to get some momentum going and play games.

“The boys have told me that was part of the problem against RHC, who have only had one or two of their games called off this season, while we’ve only had two games in the last seven weeks or so.”

Davie added: “Hopefully with the cup game, it means the pressure is off us and we can go out and enjoy the game.

“Lenzie haven’t being going as well as they were last season, but then again neither have we, but a win before Christmas would be the perfect thing to kick start us in the league in the New Year.”

The game will be played at Coats Park, with a 1.30pm kick off.