FRIDAY night's FOSROC Super6 Sprint Grand Final finished as a narrow win for Ayrshire Bulls over a Heriot's team which showed remarkable resilience in the face of adversity – with two forwards carried off, to keep the Bulls honest. To be honest, the Bulls have never demonstrated their full potential over this season's Sprint. They have been consistently under-par, but, thanks to the sheer hard-nosed will-to-win of the likes of skipper Blair Macpherson, Frazier Climo and Ed Bloodworth, even without some key men, they were still too strong for a visiting team who showed terrific defensive line s ..read more

WELL – that was a hectic weekend, with crucial games on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. It might have signalled the end of season 2022-23 in Scotland, however, the campaign definitely went out with a bang. Friday night found me again multi-tasking, thanks to the timing clash between the Toulon v Glasgow Warriors European Challenge Cup Final and the crucial first v second, Ayrshire Bulls v Watsonians FOSROC Super6 Sprint clash. To be honest, Warriors were so off the pace, I virtually gave up when both games were on simultaneously, finding the S6 game more-enthralling. Of course, that rush of ..read more

WELL – WE KEN NOO. On Tuesday Gregor Townsend announced the 41 players from whom, barring injuries, our 33-man World Cup squad will be selected. Those whose clubs still have something to play for will hope to get through these last games, then have a wee break before the hard work starts over the summer. Those who are already finished for the season, now know, they cannot exactly throw off the traces and make whoopee! Toony has always seemed – selection-wise (other than when he falls-out with The Gallus One) a conservative coach. So, no left-field “bolters” have been named; the two uncapped pl ..read more

I CAN just about remember the last Coronation. We didn't have a television then – the Old Man wasn't a fan, being very much a Scottish Home Service radio listener. However, the next-door neighbours did have a set, so we went in there to watch the ceremony. Mind you, we kids in the street were in and out all day. The actual ceremonials inside the Abbey did little for us, but, we enjoyed the pageantry of the huge parade. Indeed, I can still remember one of the jokes of the day. Queen Salote of Tonga, who, like most Tongans was “A big wummin” delighted the crowds by ignoring the rain and travelli ..read more

FRANCO SMITH has, through his management of Glasgow Warriors this season proved himself the master of what might be the most-difficult part of coaching – squad rotation. Now he faces his most-severe test of this art, as he guides his team through the sharp end of their campaign. He faces a schedule which is as daunting as anything, even a World Cup: First game – a home quarter-final against Munster in the BKT United Rugby Championship, on Saturday, 6 May Win that, it sets up a second game, either in Dublin v Leinster, or in Cape Town, v Cell C Sharks, on Saturday, 13 May Next up will be ..read more

WHAT IS this slander about men being unable to multi-task? I certainly had no bother in that respect around tea time on Saturday, simultaneously watching - Ayrshire Bulls beat Southern Knights at The Greenyards, on my lap top, and Glasgow Warriors winning in Llanelli on the television. I am putting Warriors' terrific second half showing down to the fact the Super6 game had finished and I could give Glasgow my undivided attention in the second period, when we heard that glorious sound of silence from a Welsh crowd, apart from the noise of the Taffs fans' feet as they trudged away from another b ..read more

EDINBURGH'S disappointing season faded away in the second half at The Kingspan on Friday night; just as I feared it would when Ulster edged in front late in the first half. Knowing they had to win, once the home team got their noses ahead, they were not going to blow it and duly achieved their aim of a second-place finish and home games all the way, they hope, to the final. This was a typical Edinburgh performance. They have some good attacking ploys, and some terrific attacking players, however, in the final analysis, they just fall short of being a tier one BKT United Rugby Championship team ..read more

BORN IN one outlying village, raised in another and having lived more than half my life in a third – I am not a fan of (as I call them) Scumnock Juniors. I have had umpteen runs-in with past Cumnock committees, indeed my former Editor at the Cumnock Chronicle used to joke, Thursdays – the day after the paper came out, wasn't Thursday without at least one Cumnock Juniors official complaining about something I had written about the club, which they found unacceptable. The best was the morning the entire Cumnock Juniors committee turned up, demanding, at the very-least my sacking, and preferably ..read more

AFTER the weekend, I am even-more convinced, Rugby Union's law book is in as bad a state as the SNP's finances. The Gallagher Premiership might, often, be a case of sporting paint drying, but, it does have a media presence the superior BKT United Rugby Championship can only dream about. So, when those intellectual giants Ben Kay, Austin Healy and Lawrence Dallaglio start pontificating on incidents such as Ollie Woodburn's second yellow (red) card v Leicester, well, we are all duty-bound to listen. The lesson was that while Karl Dickson (maybe not the Willie Collum – perhaps the John Beaton of ..read more

WARRIORS V SCARLETS on Friday night was a bit of a tough watch. It's maybe just as well for the Weegies that they've got Franco Smith, rather than the late Jim McLean as Head Coach. Wee Jim might well have withheld their entertainment bonus after that ugly win. However, to be serious, the awful weather, plus the visitors showing the typical Welsh ability to drag what was, on paper, a superior Glasgow outfit down to their level. This meant, we didn't get the spectacle we wanted. Still, the BKT United Rugby Championship is a results-driven business so: Match won Home quarter-final secured ..read more