Hawick Harlequins on the up to rugby’s Tennent’s East Region League Division 2 after comeback

Hawick Harlequins celebrating winning rugby's 2023 Tennent's East League Division 3 title (Photo: Sel Messer)

Hawick Harlequins have capped off their comeback season by securing rugby’s Tennent’s East Region League Division 3 title with a game to spare.

Their 53-17 victory at Edinburgh’s Trinity Academicals on Saturday was their 17th in 17 games this campaign, lifting them above Edinburgh Northern, now in second place, having concluded their fixture list.

Quins, with 59 points following a three-point sanction for failing to fulfil their first fixture of the season in September, are three clear of Northern, making their last game of this term – against fifth-placed Accies again but this time at home at Wilton Lodge Park, on Saturday, April 29, with kick-off at 3pm – a dead rubber, but captain Adam Hall says they won’t be approaching it that way as they want to keep their 100% record intact.

Their try-scorers in the capital at the weekend were Nathan Murray with four, Jack Watson and Neil Douglas with two each and Ricki Kiore, with Hall adding four conversions.

Hawick Harlequins on the ball during their 53-17 win at Trinity Academicals on Saturday (Pic: Sel Messer)

Moving up next season to Tennent’s East Region League Division 2 – home, for now at least, to Hawick Linden and Langholm – takes Quins another step back towards picking up where they left off when they called it a day in August 2021 as they’d been in East League 1 at that time after over a year off due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hall rates winning East League 3 this season as even better than being crowned champions of their old division two tiers up five years ago just because of the turnaround in their fortunes required, telling Borders Rugby TV: “Our East League 1 win was a brilliant season.

“It was really competive, with teams like Berwick there that have gone up the leagues since.

“It was sweet at the time certainly. This may be sweeter, just because of where we’ve come from.

Hawick Harlequins halting a Trinity Academicals attack in Edinburgh at the weekend (Pic: Sel Messer)

“For the first game of the season, we had 12 boys available and couldn’t fulfil the fixture and still weren’t sure whether we were going to play any games, to be honest, at that stage, but we got boys together, got a couple of wins, built up a little bit of momentum and we’ve now had more than 60 boys playing for us this season, which is brilliant.

“It’s great to be back and winning games.”

Looking to the future a league up, he added: “We’re looking forward to it. It’ll be a more competitive league, that’s for sure, and there’ll be some good teams in it that we’ve played in the past.”