Hawick up for rugby’s Scottish cup and targeting going fourth

Hawick players celebrating winning rugby's 2023 Scottish Cup against Marr at Edinburgh's Murrayfield Stadium last May (Photo by Mark Scates/SNS Group/SRU)

The Greens’ 31-13 victory against Marr at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium landed them the cup for the first time since 2002 and third time altogether, 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 – took them up to joint second place, with Glasgow Hawks, in the cup’s all-time hall of fame and a sequel this year would see them go equal top, on four wins, with Melrose, Boroughmuir, Heriot’s and Ayr, and that’s what they’re targeting, according to head coach Matty Douglas.

They begin their defence of the cup away to Scottish National League Division 1 side Glasgow Academicals this coming Saturday, March 9, with kick-off at 3pm, and a victory in that first-round tie would earn them a quarter-final away to Dundee, also in National 1, seven days later at the same time.

Dundee are one of two teams given a bye, along with Heriot’s Blues.

Head coach Matty Douglas’s Greens are the only Borderers among the 14 teams contesting 2024’s cup, premiership rivals Kelso, Selkirk and Jed-Forest and the second tier’s Melrose and Gala all having pulled out, citing a wish to prioritise their remaining Border League fixtures.

Glasgow High Kelvinside are the only other team to withdraw, their opt-out following their forfeiture of a quarter-final tie away to Hawick last March.

This year’s cup final will be played at Murrayfield on Saturday, April 27, following semis on Saturday, April 13.

Looking ahead to beginning their defence of the cup, Douglas said: “The big thing for us is that we want to compete in it.

“With this squad of players, any chance of any sort of silverware and we’re all over it.

“We just want to compete and win as much as we can. That’s why we train on Tuesdays and Thursdays, just for the fun of competing for trophies.

“We’ve got an eye on trying to win that as well as the premiership and Border League.

“We’ve got a good draw, I think, though it’ll be a tough trip to Glasgow Accies, and then the winners play Dundee away and then you’re into the semi-finals.

“We’ve potentially got a couple of away trips there but we feel we could target winning them and we’ll give it our best shot to try to retain the cup.”