Rugby’s Border League to return in October after August call-off
Next month brings this rugby season’s first Border League fixtures, one of them a stand-alone game and the other an Arnold Clark Premiership double-header.
The regional league’s first game of this term – following the postponement of a scheduled trip to Jed-Forest for Melrose back on Saturday, August 8 – will see top-flight Hawick hosting Arnold Clark National League Division 1’s Jed on Saturday, October 10, with kick-off at Mansfield Park at 3pm.
Hawick are also involved in October’s other fixture, a premiership double-header away to Melrose at the Greenyards seven days later, and that’s a 3pm kick-off too.
Head coach Graham Hogg’s Greens’ game against Michael Harshaw’s Jed will be the first time they’ve gone up against each other in the Border League for three years, their most recent meeting in that competition having been a 61-0 beating for the hosts in a premiership double-header at Jedburgh’s Riverside Park in October 2023, with both their scheduled matches since having gone unplayed.
It’s not been that long since Hawick and Melrose met on Border League duty, however, the former having hosted the latter for a 43-22 double-header defeat last October.
Two more matches are due to follow in November, both of them Friday-night stand-alone fixtures with kick-offs at 7.30pm.
The first takes Arnold Clark National League Division 2’s Peebles to National 1’s Selkirk on the 6th and the other is a trip to Hawick for the Souters’ National 1 rivals Gala on the 20th.
The last of this year’s scheduled 2026-27 Border League fixtures will be Melrose and Gala’s annual festive-season Waverley Cup game and that will be contested at the latter’s Netherdale ground on Saturday, December 26, with kick-off at 3pm.
As yet, only two Border League games are lined up for next year, both Saturday 3pm kick-offs – Gala hosting Jed for a National 1 double-header on January 27 and a stand-alone trip to top-flight Kelso for Selkirk on February 13.