Hawick looking forward to renewing old acquaintances in rugby’s Scottish cup and Border League

The Scottish Premiership table-topping Greens are away to Dundee in the cup’s last eight this coming Saturday, with kick-off at 3pm, and they’re up against another Scottish National League Division 1 side, Melrose, on Friday, March 29, at 7.30pm, in the regional league.

They’ve not played Dundee since they edged them out 39-38 at Edinburgh’s Meggetland sports complex in April 2013 in a play-off for promotion to the premiership, four years on from their first relegation ever.

The Borderers’ five tries that day, sending Dundee down to National 1, their home ever since, were scored by Scott McLeod, Graham Hogg, Matt Landells, Rory Hutton and Keith Davies, with Ali Weir kicking four conversions and a penalty and Davies also contributing a penalty.

The Greens’ memories of their last meetings with Melrose – in the premiership in 2018 ahead of the Greenyards outfit’s demotion as part of the deal that created the soon-to-be-axed Fosroc Super6 competition – will be less fond, having yielded losses home and away, by 48-19 that September and 21-10 that November respectively.

This weekend’s trip to Dundee for head coach Matty Douglas’s side follows their scheduled first-round tie away to Glasgow Academicals on Saturday gone being called off due to their prospective hosts being unable to field a team.

That cancellation gifted the Greens a bye to the competition’s quarter-finals to begin their defence of a trophy they won for the third time last year.

It’s the second year on the trot that they’ve skipped a stage of the competition due to second-tier Glaswegian opposition pulling out.

On their way to last May’s final, after beating Jed-Forest 34-7 at home in round one and Edinburgh Academical 23-12 away in round two, their scheduled quarter-final hosting Glasgow High Kelvinside was called off, sending them straight through to the semis and a 34-16 victory at Glasgow Hawks.

Hawick’s 31-13 victory against Marr at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium last time round landed them the cup for the first time since 2002 and third time all told, their other win having been in its inaugural 1996 final.

That third silverware success – half of a winning double after securing the Scottish Premiership title two months prior – lifted them up to joint second place, with Glasgow Hawks, in the cup’s all-time hall of fame and a follow-up this year would see them go equal top, on four wins, with Melrose, Boroughmuir, Heriot’s and Ayr.

Landles is delighted to be going into spring in contention for silverware on three fronts, with a premiership play-off awaiting in May after their cup quarter-final this weekend as they look to do the double for the second year on the bounce and also being six points clear at the top of the Border League with two games to go, saying: “It’s great to be in this position again.

“It’s great that on the field the boys are in the position they are, and hopefully we can go one better than last season and win a treble and not just a double, but we’re not taking anything for granted.”

Recalling Hawick’s last match against this weekend’s opponents, Landles said: “You have to go back to the relegation/promotion play-off 11 years ago at Meggetland. That was the last time we played them.

“It was a penalty try-fest but we managed to beat them by one point. I remember Dundee were trying to steamroller our pack and they got three penalty tries, and that maybe wasn’t unprecedented but it was something you didn’t get very often.”

He’s expecting to see Douglas field a full-strength team despite being up against lower-league opposition, saying: “I think we’ll be sticking pretty much to our main team to keep them on the go.

“There might be a couple of changes but we’ll not be putting out a weakened team – there’s no question of that.”

This year’s cup semi-finals will be played on Saturday, April 13, the same date as Melrose Sevens, and the final will follow at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on Saturday, April 27.

A date has yet to be set for this year’s premiership play-off, to be held at Hawick’s Mansfield Park again, but Saturday, May 4, looks to be a likely candidate.

The Greens are also waiting for a date to be fixed for their sixth and last Border League game, away to Gala.