Rugby: Melrose relishing title fight

By DAVID FERGUSON
Published on 25/08/2012 03:08

A NEW Scottish club rugby season brings a new shape and new enthusiasm among Scotland’s leading clubs to develop a more professional league, but the one burning question that hovers over today’s kick-off is whether anyone can claim the crown from Melrose.

In The Scotsman this week, we have featured all the RBS Premiership clubs, their new players and the views of coaches and leading figures, but none know how this season is going to 
pan out. They all expect a tighter, more competitive league with the reduction from 12 to ten teams, but they all fear the ability of every side in the top ten to knock over each other.

This afternoon at Bridgehaugh Stirling County will take to the field confident they can lift the whole division by showing the champions Melrose to be vulnerable and opening with a home win. One of the most recognised of Melrose players, skipper Graeme Dodds, believes that the league will be tight and insists the trophy will not return to the Greenyards if the Borderers play to the same levels of last season. But he was clear that there has been no diluting of the desire in the Melrose squad after two league wins.

“The pressure never lets up at a club like this and the coaches Craig Chalmers and John Dalziel have been stressing in pre-season the message that everything we achieved last season or the year before has gone. It means nothing now. You can look back and savour the memories when you stop playing, but you owe it to yourself and this club to forget that now and concentrate on this weekend and this season.”

Few know better of the passions that stir within the Greenyards and the pressure around the town to remain at the top of the tree than Dodds, a local boy who has come through from the youth sections and enjoyed a near-decade of senior rugby with little to show for it. How much winning the Scottish title meant to the Scotland club internationalist was evident when he broke down in tears at grasping the cup two years ago. “The first season we won it and brought the trophy back to Melrose was very emotional,” he said. “I’m going into my 11th season and I’ve played through a lot of years where we’ve been competitive and often within touching distance of winning the league, but someone else beat us to it. It is pretty hard to put into words how frustrating that becomes, year after year.

“We all grew up watching the teams of the 90s and around here that’s all you hear about – how well they did and how much they won, and how often they repeated it. So your aim at this club is to get back to that, and win the league and then win it again. It is the prize for being the best team over a whole season and puts you at the top of the game in Scotland, and so that’s the one you want.

“So when we got there two years ago, with Scott Wight leading the troops, the achievement was just amazing. There was a great spirit in the club, a tight squad and fantastic work ethic. That probably helped carry us through last season as well because it wasn’t as impressive in the sense we didn’t play as well. We had injuries and struggled at times, and so I think the feeling was more one of relief. But at the same time we got there and our name is on the trophy.”

Dodds’ focus quickly returns to this afternoon, however, and trying to subdue a Stirling side that finished last season strongly and believes it can topple the champions on day one.