Rugby: Crombie hits the heights in club win

Boroughmuir hooker Sean Crombie hailed Scotland Club XV’s win over France last night as the highlight of his career.

He was skippering the team and led by example as they won 25-18 at Ayr’s Millbrae ground.

Other Edinburgh-based players Alan Dymock, Ross Weston and Richard Snedden also started the match with Fraser Brown, John Cox and Andrew Rose coming off the bench on a good night for the Capital’s best rugby talent.

Crombie, who scored a second-half try, said: “This is definitely the highlight of my career. We made it hard for ourselves, but we kept battling to the end.

“We now need to build on this victory when we travel to Ireland next month and this is a really exciting bunch of players to be involved with.”

The teams were tied at 3-3 before the ninth minute when Currie scrum-half Snedden, winning his ninth cap at this level, took a hefty knock. After a period of a few minutes he was fit to resume though which was a big boost to the Scots.

A minute later Artero kicked his second penalty of the night to put his team 6-3 up, but Scotland were 8-6 up after 27 minutes. Crombie was the man who gave the scoring pass to Melrose winger Fraser Thomson.

Five minutes later France scored a converted try through stand-off Julien Lavie, but then they had two players yellow-carded.

Hooker Alban Viozelange followed Artero on to the sidelines and Scotland started the second half with a two-man advantage.

They took control at that point, converted tries from Crombie and Ross Currie added to be a penalty from Millar putting them 25-13 to the good.

France got a late try through Viozelange, but Scotland defended well and held out for the win.