Leith travelled the short distance to Inverleith Park to face Edinburgh Northern buoyed by last weeks derby victory against another Ferry Road Club, Trinity. A last minute switch to play the game at Broughton High School was taken but that did not phase the Leith men as they were just happy to play the game.

With a stiff breeze in the first half in the faces of the Leith men the game kicked off and Leith quickly learned that any mistakes or penalties would result in a great loss of territory as the school pitch was pretty small, in fact the distance between the 10m and halfway was the same as the distance between the 22m and 10m, and it was not 10m!! Like last week Leith fell foul early on with failure to sack a lineout resulting in an unconverted try for northern. However, instead of being the spark to get us going like last week Leith struggled to get a hold of the game. Failure to play as a unit and put any structure that we had been working on led to all to frantic play from the Academy Park side. Leith were also falling victim to frequen Northern breakdown turnovers. While we felt many of them were harsh as the tackler was not releasing the tackled man, that is no excuse for the support members not dealing with the threat.

All of this led to conceding some cheap territory and due to some pretty unorganised defence some poor tries. After a dismal first half display with only a few chances to our name, there were no complaints about going in at the break 4 tries down in what was quite easily the worst half of the season.

With a few changes made at half time Leith came out firing in the 2nd half and looked to mount a comeback. However spells of unstructured, frantic play meant that Leith were making it harder on themselves. However the breakthrough was finally made with the versatile Russell Smith scoring after coming on as a substitute winger with some good play from captain Mark Phillips. It wasn’t too long before Leith had their 2nd through the other Smith brother after a neat chip through from Blair Skipper. However just as Leith felt they may well get themselves back into the game a 5th try was conceded with poor tackling allowing their 10 to stroll through for a try. Leith didn’t give up though and Craig Smith added another to his collection for the afternoon with time fast running out. Leith searched for another try looking to salvage at least 1 point from the afternoon. However somewhat typical of a frustrating afternoon they fell short at the last hurdle.

Overall a very disappointing afternoon which finished Edinburgh Northern 39 – 19 Leith. The aim to stay in third place remains well and truly on however it will require vastly improved performances all around the park to do that. Big week of training before heading to Forrester on Saturday for a testing game.

Tries – Russell Smith, Craig Smith (2)

Conv – Kenny Dannfald (2)

MOTM – Andrew Macintosh