Currie remain in cautious mode despite breaking duck

CURRIE might have taken a while to hit their straps in the league this season, but they certainly made up for lost time when they finally discovered a bit of form at Ayr last week.

After three losses from three outings they travelled to Millbrae in desperate need of a big performance, and they stunned the 2009 league champions when they delivered exactly that – running in seven tries in a 50-13 victory.

It was a long overdue indication of what Currie are capable of, but head coach Ally Donaldson is understandably wary of prematurely consigning the frustration of those previous three defeats against Gala, Melrose and Aberdeen to the scrap heap of history.

“We’ve only won one game,” he points out. “We’ve still got to focus on getting ourselves out of the bottom four. We are in a scrap at the moment and all we are entitled to be thinking about is trying to win our next game, which happens to be against a Glasgow Hawks team that is in a similar sort of position as we were in last week.”

“They’ve lost a few games on the trot but they are a good team filled with good players so they will be determined to get their season back on track. It’s going to be a tough one.”

Donaldson says he is proud – but not surprised – by the way his boys reacted to the pain of those early season losses. When asked what changed to make a team that was so clearly out of sorts suddenly cut loose with such devastating effect against Ayr, he gives a typically uncomplicated answer.

“We played well and they will say themselves that they didn’t play well,” he says. “We had the strongest team out we have managed this season. We had a few players back after injury, and also a few more – like Andy MacMahon and Andrew Binikos – who had come back into the team the week before and were a bit closer to full fitness.”

“We were able to train and pick a side on Tuesday and didn’t change it for the rest of the week, which is the first time we have been able to do that this season. Against Aberdeen, the week before, we were forced to make six changes between Tuesday and Saturday.”

“We worked hard to make sure we had a strong squad at the start of the season, but with quite a few guys out we knew it was going to be a tough start – we just didn’t expect it to be that bad,” he continues. “The guys had to take a long hard look at themselves and they showed their true character last week. We pride ourselves on not only having good players at Currie, but also good people – and we saw that against Ayr.”

Currie got off to almost as sluggish a start to last season when they lost two and drew two of their first four games before eventually picking up a win in week five against Ayr.

Thereafter they only lost one more league game all season, and won all seven matches that they played after the split, to end up second in the table, five points adrift of Melrose. So the men from Malleny know a bit about scrapping their way back into contention.

“It is a cliche but all you can do is go from week to week. That’s what we did last year and that is what we are going to have to do this year,” says Donaldson. “The way results have gone, we are still capable of being genuine championship contenders, but that won’t happen if we get ahead of ourselves.”