Defence coach Iain Chisholm urges Southern Knights to cut out errors after home loss to Watsonians

​The Borderers had been hoping to follow up what was only their second sprint series win ever hosting Boroughmuir Bears in the competition's prior round by racking up back-to-back victories at Melrose's Greenyards on Saturday but ended up losing out to Watsonians by 24-14.

That was the Edinburgh outfit's first victory of the campaign and Chisholm is fully aware that the Bulls at home in Ayr will be a far more daunting proposition, so he's urging his team not to make the task ahead of them any tougher than it already is by gifting a head start to their hosts, as they did with head coach Fraser Brown’s visitors at the weekend.

Knights fell 21-0 behind in the first half and though they managed to peg that deficit back to 21-7 at the break, the closest they were able to get afterwards was a converted try’s distance off.

Watsonians had lost their two previous games of this farewell season, both away, by 39-21 to Heriot’s and 46-7 to Bulls last month.

Bulls, on the other hand, go into round four of the contest with the only 100% record in the table, having beaten Stirling Wolves in April and Boroughmuir on Friday too, by 43-21 and 45-7 respectively.

They’re on 15 points from those three fixtures, ten better off than fifth-placed Knights.

The hosts’ try-scorers at the weekend were inside centre Ewan Greenlaw and blindside flanker Michael Badenhorst, with full-back Callum Grieve converting both.

Their visitors’ tries were scored by blindside flanker Seb Cecil, hooker Jerry Blyth-Lafferty and inside centre Fin Thomson, with ex-Knight Jason Baggott, their captain, converting all three and full-back Dom Coetzer kicking a penalty.

Looking back over Saturday’s defeat, Chisholm lamented: “We were just really inaccurate.

“We watched the game rather than playing in it.

“Going through it on video, there was some really frustrating stuff in there, as well as some really good stuff, and now I’ve separated facts from feelings, I can see where we went wrong.

“There were system errors and individual errors and we’re very disappointed with that.

“We feel we’re a better side than that and we should have given ourselves opportunities to win.

“We didn’t do enough to win the game but, at the same time, I do think we’re a better side than them and we should have got points out of that.

“We went in at half-time 21-7 down and the guys came back out and went after it, but after such a slow start, conceding three early scores, you end up chasing the game, and when you’re doing that, you’re more likely to force things and there’s a lot of clutter in your play.

“We just have to talk about de-cluttering our game and making sure we make good early decisions and commit to decisions even if they turn out to be the wrong ones because if we commit to them, we can maybe make something of them.”

Looking ahead to the Knights’ visit to South Ayrshire, Chisholm added: “We’re up for it.

“We’ve got this weekend off and hopefully we’ll have a few guys back from injury.”

KIck-off at Millbrae on Saturday, May 18, is at 3pm.