For the 1st time in almost 10 years Leith RFC fielded two teams at the same time. Not only that, the 1st XV had a full squad of 22 and there was a squad of 19 with the 2nds, captained by Russell Smith (with advice from Keith Aitchison).

The match was played on the 4G surface at the back of Murrayfield and was a very fast paced game, almost like 7`s on occasions with some of the off loading by the Leith players absolutely brilliant at times.

On the couple of occasions Wanderers sought to exert their greater physicality, the few old heads in the squad supporting a crop of youngsters getting a full 80 minutes instead of 5 mins here and there with the 1st XV, made sure this threat was extinguished.

After one massive flare up on the halfway line all but one Leith player (David Montgomery, and to be fair to him he was trying to score at try and was at least half a pitch away from the action, that’s his explanation anyway) waded in. Whilst we're in no way condoning over aggression on the rugby pitch it demonstrated the team spirit and passion in this first 2nds selection. The game settled down after this and the referee took the decision to go to uncontested scrums, in his words because of the flare up to try to calm things down.

Leith scored 5 tries to Wanderers 3 in a very entertaining game. Try scorers were Steven Eadie x 2, Lucas Shearon x 1, Rich Hastings x 1 and Rory Clarke x 1. Russell Smith got 1 Conversion.

Chris Bobby, Jack Whyman-Farina and Jamie Martin got their first full 80 minutes and Michael Welsh, George Nixon, Ross Barker, Sean Tennant and Donald Wright all made their debuts for the Club. All had great impact on the game and are keen to gain further experience.

From a personal point of view it was brilliant to see Leith RFC getting a 2nds on to the pitch after so long a gap and the banter in our Clubrooms (after the 1s got a horsing) after the games was something special and in my view this has been missing from the Clubrooms for far too long. Here's to more 2s games this year, and a lot more in 2014/15.

In other news, I know of at least one 1st XV player who is desperate for more 2nd XV games. Its no coincidence that this player after the full 10 years of pleading for a 2nds game got his first start of this season for the 1sts. His bewilderment at this situation was brilliant to see, eh Willie Cook!!!!!!!!!

As a footnote to this report, the fact that we got a 2nds on to the pitch was not achieved without a hell of a lot of hard work by Doug Watters, Eric Jones and Jim Smith.

Much more of the same PLEASE!!!!

Leith Rugby

Murrayfield

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