​Jed-Forest out to avoid capital punishment at double

​The Borderers kicked off their new Scottish Premiership rugby season with a 41-17 defeat at home at Jedburgh’s Riverside Park to Edinburgh Academical on Saturday and they face another capital city side, Currie Chie ftains, away this coming Saturday at 3pm.

Currie go into that game at Balerno’s Malleny Park looking for back-to-back wins against representatives of the region, having seen off Selkirk 47-17 away at the weekend, but Skeldon is optimistic about his team’s chances of defying the form-book – having lost to them home and away last season, by 31-20 in October and 52-12 last August respectively – and picking up points on the road.

“We know what they bring – they’re a big, physical side and they like to throw the ball around as well – but we’ll look at a plan to go there and try to get something from that game definitely,” he told Borders Rugby TV.

Jed’s try-scorers were Rory Marshall, Lewis Young and Jamie Hynd, with Owen Cranston adding a conversion.

Touching down for Accies were captain Jamie Loomes, Robbie Chalmers, Jamie Sole, Gregor Woods, Fraser Lindsay and Alistair Wood. Loomes also kicked four conversions and a penalty.

Skeldon is confident his team will get better as time goes on, not having played any pre-season games after having two planned matches against English opposition in the form of Morepth and Penrith cancelled, saying: “We were in the game at half-time. We had plenty of opportunities in the first half. We got into their 22 but we just couldn’t quite capitalise.

“That’s maybe just down to the pre-season we’ve had. We’ve not really had a lot of chances to play together.

“We were in it for spells of the game, though the result doesn’t really reflect that.

“A bit of fitness and a bit of accuracy at the end probably told.

“There are definitely cobwebs to blow off but it was a good first hit out for us. We’ll definitely get better after that.”

Following previous head coach Andrew Brown’s departure, Jed are now being coached by Kevin Barrie, Ross Goodfellow and Euan Scott, plus Neil Cook and David Grieve.