'Winning league will be tough' - Hawick head coach Matty Douglas acknowledges considerable challenges ahead
Undefeated Hawick retained their place at the top of the Tennent's Premiership with a 26-7 home derby success over fellow borders outfit Jed-Forest at Mansfield Park on Saturday.
Matty Douglas’s side are sitting on 43 points from 10 games at the top of the standings, having recorded nine wins and a draw in the league so far this season.
Hawick haven’t won the top flight since way back in the 2001-2002 season so it would be a memorable triumph for Douglas and his troops if they could do it this time around.
The Hawick gaffer told The Southern Reporter: "We are still unbeaten and we’ve had a couple of tough Border derbies the past couple of weeks so there have been some good results to be fair. Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to be hard for us to win the league just the way it works.
"For the top four there’s a play-off after the league finishes.
"You’re then obviously into some tough games after that with a semi-final and then a final.
"If you finish in the top two you get a home semi-final so that’s the target.
"That’s been the main goal of this season since the word go.
"And if we keep sticking in then hopefully we’ll be there by the end.
"Every game’s hard. There’s a lot of top teams in this league.
"You have to win your away games as well and last season we didn’t win a lot of away games so that’s where we struggled.
"We didn’t beat any of the top four sides away from home so this year we’ve started well.”
Hawick's first try at the weekend came on the half hour mark when - after a fine run in midfield by Lewis Ferguson - Rhys Tait went over for a try converted by Kirk Ford to put the home team 7-0 ahead.
Into the second half and Jed drew level thanks to a Garry Young try being converted by Finlay Scott.
But the home team were soon ahead again as Lewis Ferguson went over to score after an Andrew Mitchell pass.
Ford added the extras to put Hawick 14-7 in front.
And things got even better for the table toppers when replacement Gareth Welsh showed both speed of thought and foot to capitalise from a tap-penalty close to the Jed line. Once again Ford added the conversion.
A deserved bonus point for Hawick was then achieved when Shawn Muir scored in the corner after a sweet move from right to left which had featured a rampaging run from Dalton Redpath.
Hawick, who have a single point lead over Currie Chieftains at the top of the standings, continue their league campaign at home to bottom side Musselburgh this Saturday with kick-off at 1.15pm.
"We play Musselburgh back to back the next two weekends but we can’t take them for granted,” Douglas said.
"The last couple of weeks our performances haven’t been the greatest.
"We’ve not been setting the world on fire. We’re trying not to let complacency set in because it can happen when you’re winning every week.
"Musselburgh will be coming here looking for points but if we’re anywhere near our best we should have too much for them.”