Scottish Hydro Premier Cup final: A breath of fresh Ayr

FOR GOODNESS knows how many years Ayr were the nearly men of Scottish club rugby, the bridesmaids but never the bride, forced to content themselves with silver rather than gold; natural born losers.

Not any more. Ayr won their inaugural Premier 1 title last season, they are neck and neck with Currie in this year's race and, after numerous failures in the quarter-finals, the club have finally made it into their first ever Scottish Hydro Premier Cup final and will face Melrose at Murrayfield on Saturday.

Something has obviously changed at the club and according to coach Kenny Murray it is not any one thing but a combination of several different aspects. "When I arrived two years ago I felt that we needed to change the style that we played," he says. "We were too focused on one way of playing that relied upon the forwards. The other thing is that this group of players are very close, they have bonded very well. They play together and then they socialise together.

"Just look at our game against West last week when we were losing by a point with two minutes to play and we somehow came up with the try that we needed in the last minute of time. The guys are very tight and that shows on the field."

Still there is one other important change that Murray does not mention, namely the influence that the coach himself has had since arriving at Millbrae.

He spent his entire rugby career at Cartha Queen's Park, including eight years as first team fly-half, before switching to player-coach, and had some success, winning the Premier 3 title, finishing second in Premier 2 and coming within one injury-time play of knocking Watsonians out of the cup. Little surprise then that the top flight came calling.

Under his direction Ayr have lost just one home match, to Pontypridd in the British and Irish Cup, and that was by just one point. Murray was absent on the day, away on Scotland duty with the Under-20 squad in Ireland. It is a little ironic that his opposite number on Saturday is the man that Murray was working with throughout the junior Six Nations.

And the Ayr coach is quick to insist that any recent difficulties that Craig Chalmers may have had, following a run-in with the red tops and Lothian and Borders' finest, should not diminish what promises to be a great cup occasion.

"We all make mistakes and I wouldn't want Craig to miss out on the cup final because of something stupid. I have a good relationship with him, we think about the game in a similar way and how it should be played."

It promises to be a close run thing on Saturday but, not unnaturally, Murray is picking Ayr's Frazier Climo to outwit Melrose's own playmaker Scott Wight in what he sees as the key battle. Climo is a Kiwi and Ayr's insistence on signing foreigners has resulted in buckets of opprobrium being heaped on them.

But leaving aside the likes of Damien Kelly, who is naturalised and a Scotland club international to boot, there are likely to be just three non-Scots sporting pink next Saturday: Climo, centre Mark Stewart and breakaway Jono Crossan.

"Ayr have always had foreign players," argues Murray, "but they have fewer this season than they've had for years. We've got a lot of good Scottish boys who've come through our squad. We're trying to get as many Scottish players as possible."

No one doubts their good intentions but however many Scottish players Ayr field next Saturday, none of them are likely to have a bigger influence on the cup final than Murray has had on the club as a whole.