Jed-Forest vs Aberdeen Grammar

Jed-Forest 15 Aberdeen Grammar 10

ABERDEEN Grammar’s stuttering season suffered another reverse at Jed-Forest when they lost 15-10 to the Borderers.

“I can’t fault the guys for effort,” said head coach Mike O’Donovan.  “But sometimes I wonder if we are foolish or just unlucky. We had enough of the ball to win the game.”

Grammar, starting the game with five regular first team players out through injury or unavailability, opened the scoring in the second minute when centre Andrew Ritchie kicked a penalty. Jed responded immediately, Seb Trotter leveling with an easy penalty to make the score 3-3.

The Jed pack was having some success with driven mauls from lineouts and it was this tactic that gave them the opening try when Billy Graham got the ball down over the Grammar line in the 15th minute. Shortly afterwards Grammar number 10 Fraser Rankine suffered a heavy knock and was replaced by Rob Lawson.

Just before half time winger Colin Philips crossed for a try after some excellent handling by both the forwards and the backs. Ritchie kicked the conversion to make the score at the break 10-8 in Aberdeen’s favour.

Grammar dominated the game in the second half but struggled to put points on the board. Jed made just two visits to the Aberdeen 22 in the second half but manage to score another try in the 65th minute with another driven maul from a lineout.  Despite frantic efforts in the closing period of the game, there was to be no last minute heroics from the Rubislaw men.

So it was a disappointed Grammar who left Riverside Park with only a losing bonus point to show for their efforts.

“We still have a mathematical chance of promotion but our aim must be to finish in as high a league position as possible, starting with a strong performance against Cartha Queens Park next week, a performance that gets a result this time,” said O’Donovan.

Biggar, West of Scotland and Selkirk all won their away matches on Saturday and have started to pull away from the chasing pack but, with only two promotion places available, one of them will miss out.

 

 

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