Rugby’s Border League title to be split four ways after season abandoned

All four Borders clubs playing in the Arnold Clark Premiership last season are the competition’s new joint champions following proposals for play-offs being rejected – top-flight survivors Kelso, Hawick and Melrose and Arnold Clark National League Division 1-bound Selkirk.

Head coaches Nikki Walker and Bruce McNeil’s Kelso, Graham Hogg’s Greens, Scott Wight and Iain Chisholm’s Melrose and Gordon Henderson’s Souters all ended up with 16 points from a possible 24 after what were scheduled to be the contest’s last six fixtures were declared forfeit, with four points being awarded to the premiership teams involved.

Those half-dozen call-offs, up one on last season’s handful and threefold on the campaign before, were all of stand-alone fixtures between top-flight teams and lower-league rivals, three apiece involving National 1’s Jed-Forest and National 2’s Peebles.

Stand-alone games were due to account for 14 of 21 fixtures making up this season but only eight went ahead, alongside seven national league matches also counting for the regional competition.

The latest edition of a competition billed as the oldest of its kind in the world, having been up and running since 1901, was the third to be played in a league format since the prior system of pools followed by finals was scrapped in 2023.

It was launched by a 38-5 win for Melrose away to Peebles last August, one of four games played that month. That’s the most to have been played in a single month all season, with two following in September, October, December and February and three in November.

Melrose’s opening win was the second-biggest of the season, only exceeded by the 81-21 hiding they handed out to Jed at home at the Greenyards a week later.

The narrowest margin of victory was a single point as Hawick edged out Selkirk 18-17 at home in a premiership double-header at Mansfield Park last September.

The league’s latest season was the first in its 125-year history to end with a title being split four ways, though honours have been shared two ways before – by Gala and Melrose in 1950 and Hawick and Jed in 1910.

All four joint champions this season have been outright winners in the past – Hawick 50 times, most recently in 2024; Melrose 19, last in 2019; defending champions Selkirk eight; and Kelso five, though not since 1987.

Head coach Ewen Robbie’s Gala finish this term fifth on 12 points, with opposite number Michael Harshaw’s Jed and Graeme Paterson’s Pees ending up joint bottom on four.

The last game to go ahead this time round was a 26-15 defeat for Hawick away to National 1’s Gala back on Friday, February 13.

Three of the six matches due to have followed since then were called off, one of them twice, and now the other three, one rescheduled, due to take place between this Thursday and Wednesday, April 15, have been abandoned as well.

The double call-off among the former was a home fixture for Kelso against Peebles, first due to be played on Friday, February 27, then rescheduled to April 15.

The others were Selkirk hosting Jed and Hawick away to Peebles on Friday, March 13, plus a trip to Jedburgh’s Riverside Park for the Greens on Saturday gone.

Kelso were then due to host Jed at Poynder Park this Thursday and Peebles, at the second time of asking, on April 15, with the Pees travelling to Philiphaugh to take on Selkirk in between on Wednesday, April 8.

This week’s flurry of call-offs mean Melrose and Gala are the only teams in the seven-strong league to have played all of their allotted fixtures, with Kelso, Hawick and Selkirk managing four and Jed and Peebles three apiece.