Heriot's FP 24 - 20 Boroughmuir: Heriot's play their cards right to edge past Muir

Both teams are safely into the top eight of the Premier One competition following this result although whether either Edinburgh club has the wherewithal to compete for the top honours is doubtful.

For a match that boasted some superb attacking (and some woeful defence), seven tries in all and a lead that changed hands several times, at the end of the affair all the talk still focused on the performance of the referee.

Andy Ireland is hugely experienced so his reluctance to show a yellow card or two early in this game was a strange one. Both sides were guilty of killing opposition ball at the breakdown although Muir probably edged this part of the game along with the scrums. Both scum-halfs were left pointing at miscreants in the ruck and asking the referee what he planned to do about it. The answer was a long series of penalties adding to the stop-start nature of the game.

The Faustian pact modern rugby has made is that by banning rucking - the players' way of telling the opposition to stay onside - the game now requires the referees to fill that vacuum with yellow cards because, as this game proved, penalties don't solve anything, especially when Heriot's skipper Graham Wilson leaves his kicking boots at home.

The first half was a see-saw affair with both sides sharing six tries. The pick of the tries Heriot's scored was by the big lock CJ Osazuwa after superb offloads from Mark Lee and Colin Goudie. Muir's best effort was a solo score by flyhalf Harry Leonard who switched on the afterburners and scorched his way to the line from 30 metres out.

The net result was a one-point lead for the visitors at half-time and despite a few opportunities at both ends of the field it stayed that way until the 78th minute when Struan Dewar was sent over in the right-hand corner by Wilson after Goudie kicked a huge touch-finder to within a few metres of the Muir line.

The Edinburgh apprentice flanker was no more able than anyone else to sort out the unholy horlicks at the breakdown but he rose above the general morass in a way that several other full-time professionals failed to do.

"That opening was there for a couple of plays but the forwards kept driving it up. Eventually I caught Graham's eye and it was on," said the home hero after the final whistle. "When we clicked we were almost unstoppable for those 25 minutes in the first half. We blew them off the park. We just need to work on our consistency because we fell asleep for the last ten minutes before half-time and let them right back into the game."

The athletic breakaway showed some nice touches, beating one man in open play with the sort of fancy footwork usually showcased on Saturday night television.Like a good openside flanker he also made a point of introducing himself to Boroughmuir's Leonard early on and caught the visiting flyhalf from behind in one memorable moment.

Dewar is a decent prospect but he is caught between a rock and a hard place; too small for anything other than openside, Dewar can be no better than the fourth-choice seven at Edinburgh behind Roddy Grant, Ross Rennie and Alan MacDonald. Perhaps he'll follow the example of Michael Maltman who is currently doing great things for Moseley in the English championship. He'll find that they use yellow cards south of the border.

Scorers: Heriot's: Tries: Osazuwa, Nimmo, Dymock, Dewar. Cons: Wilson 2. Boroughmuir: Tries: Scott, Leonard, MacIntosh. Cons: Leonard. Pens: Leonard.

Heriot's: Goudie; Bryce, Learmonth, Walker, Nimmo; Hunter, Wilson; Dymock, Burnett, Cameron, Osazuwa, Hill, Lee, Dewar, Syme. Replacements from: Gillies, Blacklock, Reid, Eccles, Ferguson.

Boroughmuir: Jones; Neil, Clapperton, Bishop, Cairns; Leonard, Reekie; Latta, MacIntosh, Gilding, McColl, Scott, O'Riordan, Rodger, Hare. Replacements from: Jones, Fraser, Rose, Johnson, Warnock.

Referee: A Ireland.