Buddies escape back West with victory

Leith welcomed Paisley Rugby Club through from the west for a pre season game as both teams continued their warm up for the league kick off at the end of the month. With the Academy Park crowd's appetite well and truly wetted from the 2nd XV's entertaining victory over Queensferry it was time for the 1st XV to take to the field.

It was a fast start made to the game, with Leith playing against the wind, in-roads were already being made into the Paisley half and red zone. After some good work by the forwards, the ball was spread wide and Eoin Murphy was able to pop off to centre partner Doug Watters who scored in the corner. Where Leith should have kicked on in the game they went to sleep and gifted Paisley the ball who made use of the wind being able to kick deep and start applying pressure of their own. This led to 4 unanswered Paisley tries which went down to a combination of smart paisley play and some individual Leith mistakes.

However in the 2nd quarter saw a reversal of fortunes as the Leith men were on the front foot and growing into the game and the scores started to come. After a good break by Fraser Forsyth, Grant Aitken was able to touch down under the posts, then in a sweeping move from right to left Watters provided the opportunity for Jon Derrin to scamper down the wing and use some power and pace to cross the line for a good score. The provider then became the scorer for the 2nd time in the game as Eoin Murphy offloaded to Watters inside the 22, and the outside-centre beat the fullback to cross the line for the score.

The comeback was well and truly on, however a couple of things went awry as Roan Van Heerden slipped in the 22m as he was looking like scoring Leith's 4th try on the bounce, then centre Eoin Murphy was adjudged to have illegally and dangerously cleared out a Paisley player and was sent to the bin for 10 mins. However as the halftime whistle blew Leith were in the ascendency and back in the game.

The 2nd half was a lot more even as the 2 teams had made some replacements and each started to get the measure of previously unknown opposition. Leith defended mightily with 14 men on their try line for the first 10 minutes of the 2nd half and repelled Paisley for the majority of it, however the pressure told and the men in red and blue crossed their line. A few minutes later, loose-head prop Connor Kerr was unfortunate to suffer what would later be diagnosed a broken collarbone and was taken from the field. We wish him a speedy recovery.

Leith were not done yet though, and after yet another break from centre Eoin Murphy through the heart of the Paisley defence he was able to give Doug Watters the pass to hand off covering defence and cross the line and complete his hat trick from the 22m line. The try of the game from a Leith perspective then followed as 2nd row Mike McLeish hit a great line to slice through the Paisley defence before drawing the man and passing to the on rushing Grant Aitken to score his 2nd of the day. These scores brought Leith to within 1 point of their visitors, however as Leith pressed to get more points on the board in the last 10 minutes they left the back door ajar and allowed Paisley to exploit some gaps and pull into the lead for the final time in the day.

Overall despite the result it was a very worthwhile exercise for Leith, and good to play a team with a similar philosophy of trying to move the ball wide and play open rugby and has given us plenty to concentrate on over the next few weeks.

Many thanks to the Paisley boys for traveling through in such great numbers and playing their part in a very entertaining game. We wish you well in the coming season and look forward to travelling to Anchor next preseason.