​Selkirk hoping for hat-trick of derby wins in rugby’s Scottish Premiership and Border League

​Head coach Gordon Henderson is fully aware what a big ask that is – the Greens being at the opposite end of the Scottish Premiership table to the Souters, second from top with 32 points from eight fixtures as opposed to second from bottom with 13 – but he believes his team are capable of flying in the face of the form-book and is confident they’ll give it their best shot.

“It’s a great fixture and the boys will be excited by it. They’ll be buzzing in training and, more importantly, keen to perform,” said Henderson, nicknamed Sesh.

“Hawick are a quality side. They’re good players well coached, we know that, but you’ve got to go there and give it a go and see what they’ve got or you’ll just get trampled over.

“We’ve got to go there and stay in the fight for 80 minutes and see what happens.

“We’ve got to upset their rhythm as much as we can and we’ll put things in place this week that’ll help us do that.

“We’ve got players coming back that will strengthen our pack and there were no injuries at the weekend, which was good.

“I’m hoping we can make it as hard as we can for Hawick.

“We’ll prepare well during the week and we’ll give it our best shot on Saturday.

“It’s a Borders derby and that excites me and excites the players.

“We’ve been involved in a couple already and they were good battles.”

Having coached at Hawick previously, Henderson’s relishing the prospect of renewing old acquaintances at Mansfield Park this weekend, saying: “There are a lot of good people there and I was there for a few years, so I’m looking forward to going back with Selkirk and seeing what we can do.”

Saturday’s match, kicking off at 3pm, follows Selkirk’s sixth defeat of the season at the weekend, by 32-25 at home at Philiphaugh to Edinburgh Academical.

Aaron McColm, Andrew Grant-Suttie, Blake Cullen and Josh Welsh scored the hosts’ tries, with Hugo Alderson converting one and McColm kicking a penalty too.

Touching down for head coach Iain Berthinussen’s visitors from the capital were Robbie Chalmers and Finlay McNeill with doubles and Patrick Ritchie. Max Wallace added a conversion and penalty.

Though unhappy with the way his team gave their visitors a 20-0 head-start by the interval, Henderson was heartened by the second-half fightback that got them within a score of levelling the game.

“I was disappointed with our first half but we had an honest discussion at half-time about where we were,” he said.

“I asked for an immediate reaction and I think I got that in the second half. We got back into the game and played some really good rugby.

“Fair play to the boys, they kept fighting and got two points out of the game. They deserved that for their second-half performance. They probably didn’t deserve to get anything for their first-half performance but we got the reaction that we did so we deserved something at the end.

“I’m disappointed we didn’t get a win but two points is two points and we’ll take that.”