Injury-hit Southern Knights muster reinforcements ahead of trip to Fosroc Super6 Championship basement side Stirling Wolves

Southern Knights debutant David Colvine being tackled by Boroughmuir Bears' defence at the Greenyards in Melrose on Friday (Photo by Simon Wootton/SNS Group/SRU)

The injury list accompanying that 36-12 defeat the weekend before last – including Ruaridh Knott breaking an ankle and Callum Grieve dislocating a knee – left the Borderers with more than a dozen players unavailable for their follow-up game at home at the Greenyards in Melrose to Boroughmuir Bears on Friday night.

Those absences led to Super6 debuts for Melrose’s David Colvine at full-back and Douglas Crawford at scrum-half, as well as their team-mate Struan Hutchison coming in as emergency cover at stand-off.

Patched up and rejigged though head coach Bruce Ruthven’s hosts might have been, they only ended up one try behind their visitors from the capital, scoring three to the Bears’ four, and, happily, they managed to get through a 24-15 defeat without adding to their injury woes.

Their tries, all unconverted, were scored by captain Fraser Renwick at the double and Cameron Scott.

On the scoresheet for Bears head coach and former Melrose player Graham Shiel’s side were Hawick’s Corey Tait, Callum Ramm, Josh King and ex-Knight Joe Jenkins with tries, two of them converted by Jack Bergin.

Next up for Knights, currently second bottom of the table without any points from their two games so far, is a trip to basement side Stirling Wolves, beaten 38-17 at home by Heriot’s at the weekend, this Friday, with kick-off at 7.45pm.

“Obviously it was a disappointing result to come away with no points,” Hutchison told Borders Rugby TV afterwards.

“We felt we had opportunities within the second half to get over the line a little bit, but unfortunately we lost a little bit of that momentum, Boroughmuir scored and then it was quite hard coming back from that.

“We all played pretty well and we’re just disappointed not to come away with anything.

“It wasn’t to be, unfortunately, and we came away with nothing.

“The guys played the Bears a couple of weeks ago in a pre-season friendly and they performed pretty well, so they were optimistic or quite hopeful that they would get the result, but Boroughmuir came with a lot of physicality and I thought they played really well.”