In photos: Kelso get off to winning start as rugby’s Kings of 7s returns

That puts the Poynder Park club at the top of the competition’s leaderboard with ten points, the Greens second with seven, Edinburgh’s Watsonians third with five and defending champions Melrose, hosts Peebles, Gala and Selkirk next, all on three.

Three-times Kings of the 7s winners Kelso – fielding a squad, captained by Frankie Robson, made up of Archie Cowens, Cammy Brown, Duncan Smith, Hamish and Robbie Tweedie, James and Cammy Thompson, Angus Roberts, Andy Tait, Dwain Patterson and Keith Melbourne – beat Gala 24-10 and Biggar 33-14 in their pool, then Watsonians 28-17 in the semis on their way to the final.

Hawick, skippered by Kirk Ford, saw off Melrose by 24-7 and Berwick by 47-0 in their pool, then got the better of invitational charity side Hearts and Balls by 21-0 in the semis.

“The boys really dug in and showed some heart there to come back from three scores down at half-time and with two or three minutes to go and claw three tries back at the end,” Patterson, named as player of the tournament, told Borders Rugby TV afterwards.

“All credit to the boys. It was outstanding from them.

“We weren’t panicking too much at half-time, I wouldn’t say, as we still had seven minutes to play. They’d scored three tries and we knew we could as well.

“It got to about three minutes to go and Frankie said ‘lads, we’ve not come here to get embarrassed’ and I think that really kicked us all into gear and the boys showed heart and really great determination to claw that back against a really good Hawick side.”

Selkirk won by 12-5 against Edinburgh Academical in their pool but lost out by 26-7 to Watsonians.

Gala’s other pool match was a 24-5 victory against Biggar.

Jed-Forest lost both their pool games, by 24-0 to Hearts and Balls and 31-12 to Peebles, with the Pees going down 33-0 to the charity outfit in that group’s other match.

Melrose’s other pool game was a 43-10 win against Berwick.

Hawick’s sevens having been put back to April 2024, there’s only one round of the competition left to go for this year, at Galashiels on Saturday, August 19, and it takes an eight-month break after that, resuming at Melrose on Saturday, April 13.

Though Kelso are the fifth most successful side in the history of the Kings of the 7s, they’ve not won the contest overall this century – their three victories to date having been in 1996, 1997 and 1998 – and it was also back in 1998 that they last won at Peebles.

Melrose’s win earlier this year took their tally of titles to nine, three ahead of second-placed Jed.