13 Hawick players in South of Scotland training squad for rugby’s Scottish inter-district championships

No fewer than 13 Hawick players have been selected, making up a third of their 39-strong ranks, 22 forwards and 17 backs.

They are Kirk Ford, Ronan McKean, Andrew Mitchell, Gareth Welsh, Jae Linton, Calum Renwick, Stuart Graham, Dalton Redpath, Shaun Fairbairn, Nicky Little, Matt Carryer, Fraser Renwick and Shawn Muir.

Selkirk and Musselburgh are the clubs next best represented, both contributing six players.

Selkirk’s inclusions are Aaron McColm, Scott McClymont, Andrew Cochrane, Andrew McColm, Bruce Riddell and Luke Pettie and their East Lothian opponents’ are Paul Cunningham, Sandy Watt, Danny Owenson, Paul Bogie, Michael Badenhorst and Craig Owenson.

They line up alongside Jed-Forest’s Gregor Young and Paulo Ferreira; Kelso’s Dwain Patterson, Angus Roberts, Frankie Robson and Bruce McNeil; Melrose’s Donald Crawford, Struan Hutchison, Bruce Colvine and Calum Crookshanks; and Gala’s Ben Gill, Craig Dods, Angus Dun and Liam Scott.

Peebles are the only Borders national league side unrepresented, though their head coach, Iain Chisholm, will be helping out Hawick and South gaffer Matty Douglas, along with Melrose’s Bert Grigg and Musselburgh’s Andrew Clark.

The South squad, to be cut by a quarter ahead of their two matches in May, was chosen by a selection panel comprising Jed-Forest’s Ali Campbell and Selkirk’s Ewen Swinton in consultation with Douglas, Grigg, Chisholm and Clark.

Explaining that process, Douglas said: “Our selectors came to us with their thoughts after watching around and then we all sat down and spent around three hours picking the squad.

“We’re starting with a training squad because there are a lot of boys I haven’t seen playing and I want to see them training, with a lot of game-based stuff, and then in two weeks’ time, we’ll pick a squad of 30, I think, for the two games.”

He’s looking forward to carrying on working with a fair few well-kent faces following the end of Hawick’s XVs season with this year’s Scottish Cup on Saturday, May 6, saying: “Taking my Hawick hat off for a minute, they’ve been the in-form team in the premiership and ther are a lot of quality operators in there and they deserve to be in this squad.

“I think we’ve got a good balance representing every team. Obviously, some teams are less represented than others but there are some external factors such as sevens still going on, leaving boys unable to commit.

“I’m happy with the boys we’ve selected and that they’re committed to the next few weeks with the South.

“It’s a really, really competive and quality-looking squad.”

The South will host Edinburgh at Netherdale in Galashiels on Tuesday, May 9, with kick-off at 7pm, and the winners of that match will take on either Caledonia Reds or Glasgow and the West in 2023’s championship final on Sunday, May 21, at a venue yet to be confirmed, with the losers contesting a third-place play-off.

Douglas is relishing the prospect of taking on a lot of familiar faces from the Greens’ premiership opposition last season at Netherdale when head coach Bob McKillop’s capital side visit, telling us: “Looking at the Edinburgh squad, it’s very similar to ours in terms of Currie Chieftains having 13 players in there and they’re a quality squad as well.

“It’ll be two high-quality teams taking to the field and it’ll be a good advertisement for what these club players can do in the Borders and across Scotland.”

Next month’s Netherdale knockout fixture will be the red-and-white-hooped regional representatives’ first at XVs since November 2017, a side with Kevin Barrie as head coach beating Caledonia Reds 40-24 at Stirling’s Bridgehaugh Park that time round, although they have continued to compete at sevens, including at Percy Park in North Shields last year.

That match in Stirling six years ago, a fundraiser for the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, was one of only four 15-a-side games played by the South so far this century, the previous one, a 33-7 victory, also being against Caledonia Reds, at Jedburgh’s Riverside Park in November 2016, and the others against Northumberland and a Barbarians team.

The South team beat Northumberland 37-3 in Galashiels in December 2009 and the Barbarians 22-15 in Hawick in October 2011.

McNeil, with Hawick at the time, played in all four of those matches, making the 39-year-old the South’s longest-serving squad member.

He was one of five Greens in the South’s starting line-up last time round, with a further five on the bench, the others being Lee Armstrong, Guy Graham, Carryer and Little, with Greg Cottrell, Dom Buckley, Lewis Ferguson, Redpath and Muir as replacements.

Also in their starting XV were Gala’s Graham Speirs, Craig Russell and captain Gregor Hunter; Jed-Forest’s Ewan Scott, Robbie Shirra-Gibb, Sean Goodfellow and Gregor Law; and Selkirk’s Luke Pettie, Andrew Renwick and Calum Marshall, with Jed’s Cameron Mackay, Kelso’s Blair Robertson and Selkirk’s Josh Mackay as further substitutes.