Warriors take the title to keep The Ladies Cup in Glasgow
The 125th edition of the Melrose Sevens was played at The Greenyards on Saturday in a mixture of showers and sunshine. The accompanying bitterly cold wind didn’t deter the usual big crowds from turning out to see Glasgow Warriors taking the crown for the second year in succession.
All six of Edinburgh’s top sides fielded teams, with Edinburgh Academy being the lone representative with a bye into Round 2.
Watsonians and Boroughmuir were drawn together and it was the National League side who won through with a comfortable 19-7 victory. Stewarts-Melville were next up against Ayr and the West coast side sprinted into a the lead, posting 26 unanswered points before Stew-Mel managed to come up with a consolation try to make it a 26-7 final score.
Premiership finalists, Heriots, then came up against Jed-Forest. Finishing the regular season 10 points clear of Ayr at the top of the Premiership, Heriots may have been expected to win easily, but sevens is a different game and National League side, Jed ran away to a 22-5 win. Last out for Edinburgh were Currie. The West of Edinburgh side came up against another Border’s team in the shape of Selkirk and had little trouble in puting them away to the tune of 31-15.
Watsonians played Hawick in the second round and, once again, Sonians saw off another Premiership side, this time dealing out a whitewash on their way to a 38-0 win. Edinburgh Accies then played Kelso. This was a very evenly matched contest with ‘normal’ time finishing at 12-12. With ‘sudden death’ applying in extra time, Accies scored the necessary try to win 17-12. Currie won through to play one of the guest teams, the South Africans from North West University. South African University sides have usually gone well at Melrose but in a closely contested match they lost out to Jed-Forest 21-17. Currie played Melrose’s near Neighbours, Gala an the second last match of the second round and couldn’t repeat their first round display, losing out to the Border’s team 19-7.
Two Edinburgh sides had, therefore qualified for the quarter-final matches, but that was to be the end of their participation for the day. Watsonians put up a decent display against – eventual finalist – the German National side, but were put out with a 22-14 win for the ‘visitors’. Accies played Jed in the next match on the cards, but, once again, the National League side put in a fine performance to take a close match 19-17.
Meanwhile, Glasgow Warriors had quietly gone about their business and put Dundee away 31-0 and then had a slightly harder task against Gala, but came up trumps 26-12. They then played Jed-Forest and had to endure going behind, before running in three tries of their own. Jed then came back with their second but Glasgow held on to win 17-12 and a final berth. Germany had, what was seen as, the harder task, but Melrose couldn’t up their game sufficiently and went out 22-12.
In the final, Glasgow took an early 12-0 lead, but Germany came back with three tries to head the Professional side 21-12. However, that was the end of their scoring and Warriors eventually ran out 36-21 winners to take the title and the Ladies Cup back to Scotstoun for the second year in a row.
Images from some of the matches will appear here over the next few days.
