Selkirk hoping to finish Scottish Premiership rugby season on high note away to Heriot’s

The Souters are on 35 points from 17 fixtures at the moment, ten behind seventh-placed Heriot’s Blues.

They’ve only got one game to go, away to Heriot’s at Edinburgh’s Goldenacre playing fields this coming Saturday, with kick-off at 2pm, so their hosts, on 45 points from 17 games, are out of reach.

Selkirk, however, could still be leapfrogged by second-from-bottom Glasgow Hawks. With 30 points from 16 fixtures, the Glaswegians have got two games left and a points-scored difference 117 better than the Souters, so, mathematically at least, seventh place is still a possibility even if head coach Gordon Henderson’s Borderers are able to notch up their seventh win of the season in the capital this weekend.

Hawks’ remaining games are at home to fourth-placed Kelso this Saturday, at 2pm, and away to bottom-of-the-table Jed-Forest on Saturday, March 2, at 3pm, so one or other – or both – of those Border League rivals of Selkirk’s might well do them a favour, though.

What happens at the Hawks’ Balgray Stadium home ground or Jedburgh’s Riverside Park being outwith the Souters’ influence, their focus is only on trying to get a result against Heriot’s to bounce back from their 59-3 thumping at home to table-toppers Hawick on Saturday, February 3, and conclude their campaign on as positive a note as they can come up with, says Henderson, alias Sesh.

“We’ll regroup and get back to work and we’ve got one game to go, against Heriot’s, so we want to try to put a good performance in to end our season in the premiership,” he said.

“It’s what you’d call a nothing game for us, I guess – maybe not for them as they could still go up a place – but it’s the end of the season so we’ll be looking for another positive performance and the players know that and they want to do that.

“We’re excited about going up to Edinburgh and we’ll put 80 minutes in and see what happens and hopefully finish the season on a high.”

They’ve also got the incentive of making amends for their 26-13 defeat in the reverse fixture against the Edinburgh outfit at Philiphaugh in October.

That defeat was one of 11 to date this season and Henderson recalled: “It was one of those games when we just lost by a couple of scores.

“Heriot’s deserved to win but there wasn’t a great deal in the game.”

The Souters’ last hurrah in Scottish club rugby’s top flight is followed by Border League games at home to Melrose on Friday, February 23, and at home to Gala on Friday, March 8, both at 7.30pm, with a further fixture hosting Peebles yet to be rescheduled.

They go into that regional league run-in sitting second to Hawick on the leaderboard, with eight points from three games, all premiership double-headers, leaving them level with third-placed Kelso but eight behind the Greens.

Henderson is looking forward to those regional stand-alone fixtures as they continue their defence of their seventh title, secured by a 12-6 win in last March’s final against Melrose in Galashiels, saying: “The boys enjoy playing in the Border League and it’ll maybe give us an opportunity to give games to a couple of guys who’ve been playing well in the Selkirk A team. We’ll probably make two or three changes for the Melrose game.

“The Border League’s important to us but it’s an opportunity as well to blood some youngsters and I’ll be looking to do that.

“We’ll be going out there to win games but we’ve also got to take opportunities and for one of them, against Gala, we’ve got a few guys away anyway watching Scotland play Italy in Rome in the Six Nations. That gives us opportunities to try out other players who’ve been knocking on the door but not got into the first XV yet.”