​Hawick keeping top four of rugby’s Arnold Clark Premiership in sights after 36-17 derby win v Melrose

That bonus-point win puts five points between the sixth-placed Greens and seventh-placed Melrose but they’re no closer to the top four as Currie Chieftains tightened their grip on fourth place by beating Kelso 33-14 at home at the weekend.

Saturday’s results leave Currie on 54 points from 17 fixtures, fifth-placed Selkirk on 52 from 17, Hawick on 45 from 17, Melrose on 40 from 18 and Kelso, the Greens’ next opponents, ninth on 35 from 18.

This coming Saturday sees Hawick away to Kelso at Poynder Park and Selkirk and Melrose at home, to Currie and second-from-bottom Marr respectively, all 3pm kick-offs.

Head coach Graham Hogg’s Hawick go into that second derby in the space of seven days looking for a winning double after handing out a 52-12 hiding to co-opposite numbers Bruce McNeil and Nikki Walker’s Kelso at home in the reverse fixture in October.

That same day’s fixture card also included a 54-31 defeat for the Souters in the capital and a 22-12 victory for Melrose in Troon.

Hawick’s try-scorers on Saturday as they fought back from falling 12-10 behind at half-time were inside-centre Lee Armstrong, loosehead prop and captain Shawn Muir, lock Hughie Donaldson, scrum-half Logan Henry and outside-centre Andrew Mitchell, with full-back Kirk Ford adding four conversions and a penalty.

Touching down for co-head coaches Scott Wight and Iain Chisholm’s visitors were blindside flanker Elliot Ruthven, right-winger Keiran Clark and full-back Morgan Gabe, with fly-half Struan Hutchison kicking one conversion.

Hooker Fraser Renwick was making his 100th appearance for Hawick and he was glad to have marked that milestone with his side’s eighth victory of the season, telling Borders Rugby TV afterwards: “Obviously, we’re very pleased.

“It’s five points again at home, so I’m over the moon, to be fair.

“After a sketchy first half, we came out for the second half and really took it to Melrose, and once we get ball in hand, we’re pretty dangerous if we can keep it.

“We felt we’d played really poorly in the first half, probably one of our queerest first-half performances of the season, but we were only two points behind. We’ve got a lot of character in the squad and we were able to pull it back from that, so that was good.”

Looking ahead to continuing the Greens’ push for a top-four finish at Kelso, Renwick, 27, added: “We’ll go to Poynder with no fear and if get another win there, that’ll put us right up there, so you never know.

“We’ll keep fighting until the last game of the season.”

Hawick and Melrose’s derby at the weekend was their first in the top flight since a 21-10 win for the latter at the Greenyards in November 2018 – and their first in all competitions since a 20-7 Border League victory for the former at home in March – but they only have to wait another three weeks for their next one. It’s at the Greenyards on Saturday, March 22, with kick-off at 3pm.

​Visiting fly-half Struan Hutchison was disappointed his side were unable to capitalise on their first-half dominance to put the game beyond Hawick’s reach and claim their first win for almost three months.

That 36-17 loss extended their current winless streak to six fixtures – five defeats and a draw – since a 43-29 victory at home to Currie Chieftains back on Saturday, December 7, and Hutchison is hoping they can get the better of Marr this Saturday to prevent it stretching into another month.

“There were quite a lot of tackles that were either missed or passive and that allowed Hawick to get on the front foot,” said the No 10.

“Ultimately, rugby’s a collision game. It’s a momentum game, and you have to win those moments first and foremost, and we didn’t, and that’s ultimately what got Hawick in there and then they started playing on top of us and it was tough to then get set in defence. That probably happened five or six times too often in the second half.

“We had our tails up in that first half. You talk about moments in games and ultimately that’s what defines them. Probably the moment in that game was when we were 10-5 up and we had a scrum down in the bottom corner. They then got a penalty and went down the other end and scored to make it a 12-10 game.

“Had we got three, five or seven points in there, it would have put us that little bit in front, but fair play to Hawick, they went down the other end, then scored and Kirk kicked a conversion from fairly wide out, which made it 12-10, which is a bit of a different score to 15-5 or 17-5 or whatever.

“We felt we had our tails up but, for whatever reason, we didn’t capitalise on that and we didn’t build on that in the second half.”