Another weekend of fixtures and another leader at the top of West 1.
As of Saturday evening, it’s now Garnock setting the pace following their 58-8 victory over Annan. There was no bonus point for East Kilbride in their 22-10 home win against Stewartry, so they missed their chance to go top. Both are on 44 points, but Garnock have the superior points difference.
Glens drop to third as their game against Strathendrick was off due to an unplayable pitch. They’re one point behind the leaders, but they do have a game in hand.
A big 83 points to 7 win for Greenock against Cambuslang means they stay in fourth, five behind the leaders, but also with a game in hand.
It’s nice and competitive between the top four and with some interesting games again this weekend, we will see a bit a shuffling about amongst the contenders.
We’ve got what is perhaps Scottish rugbys game of the day taking place at The Bearyards on Saturday as Allan Glens welcome East Kilbride.
In their first meeting of the season, Glens won by a point, and since then both have been scoring plenty. Glens only defeat in the league was against Greenock, whilst EKs only other league defeat came at Irvine at the end of October. They quickly rectified that one the following week with a victory at home over Greenock.
This is going to be a tight one, so normally in this circumstance, we’d go with home advantage, but in each of the games between the title challengers we’ve watched this season, it’s the defences who have been dominant. Reviewing our video highlights of the Glens v Greenock and EK v Greenock games, it just strikes us that EK were the more creative in attack. It may be a bit too construed and not very scientific (i.e. gut feeling), but we’ll go with an away win in this one.
Greenock also have an interesting trip, this time away at sixth-placed Stewartry. Stewartry have won three from their last five fixtures, with the losses coming against Garnock & EK (1st & 2nd), but neither have been big losses. It was a comfortable win for Greenock in their first encounter so we’ve got them as favourites, but they’ll need to be on top form to ensure the win. Scanning back their recent fixtures shows Greenocks last three league away results have been loss, loss, draw.Leaders Garnock are away at ninth place Kilmarnock. Since their draw with Greenock in October, Kilmarnock have been picking up points more regularly and appear to be growing in confidence. We watched them against Dalziel on Saturday, and whilst it was pretty even in the 1st half, Kilmarnock never let up their intensity, and ran in several tries second half to give a comfortable 56-22 win. It’s a young team, so will be interesting to see how they cope with the growing expectations. Garnock had a slow start to their campaign, but have been quietly going about their business, not scoring as many points as Glens or Greenock, but they have the tightest defence in the league. We’re going an away win.
It’s all very tight at the top of the table, so win, lose or draw on Saturday, picking up bonus points is going to be important. Come the ned of the season, it’s bonus points which may be the deciding factor on who lifts the title.
Annan started off the season strongly, but three defeats of the past few weeks have seen them drop 13 points behind the leaders. They’ll be looking at this week's home game against Strathendrick as a chance to get things back on track.
November was going well for Endrick with important victories over Cumnock and Cambuslang, but their heavy defeat at Stewartry a couple of weeks ago brought that to a sudden end. Annan at home are our favourites for this one, but now the Autumn Tests are out of the way, Endrick must surely be stronger. We’re going for Annan, but will be keeping an eye on Endrick picking up any bonus points as this will be enough to ensure they don’t get overtaken by Cumnock, who are visiting Cambuslang.
It’s been a tough November for Cambuslang, four games, four defeats and conceding over 200 points. At the end of October, Cambuslang were only a stone's throw behind the leaders, but they now find themselves only a few points ahead of the relegation battle, with each of these Clubs having games in hand on Cambuslang.
A win for Cumnock and Cambuslang will be right in the relegation mix. However, it’s been four weeks since Cumnock last had a competitive game, so they might be a bit rusty, but given Cambuslang's experience in recent weeks, Cumnock may be meeting them at a good time. We’ll go with home advantage, but won’t be surprised if we’re wrong on this one.
In this weekend's final game Dalziel welcome Irvine. Like Cumnock, it’ll be four weeks since Irvine have played, so it could also be argued their players will be rusty, but then again, maybe they’re just well rested.
In seventh place, Irvine have won five from ten games, but none of these wins have come away from home. A couple of these away defeats have however only been by a single score. In their first encounter of the season, Irvine won comfortably – 34-9.
Having come down from National 3, we’d expected more from Dalziel this season, but they’ve been a strange kettle of fish.In recent weeks, they’ve beaten Kilmarnock in the Shield but also lost narrowly at Cambuslang (having been in the game for 60 minutes) and against Stewartry, whilst on Saturday in the league, they were again in the game against Kilmarnock for probably, 50 minutes. However, a couple of quick tries from long range for Kilmarnock and Dalziel just lost their way. We ended up with a scoreline that suggests a bit of seeing to – when it wasn’t really.
Dalziel created, but then squandered several chances against Kilmarnock, so if they can find a clinical edge and keep their focus for a full 80 minutes, they’ll have a chance of picking up results – but the question is whether this can be fixed over the course of a couple of training sessions.
Winning games like this weekends against Irvine is crucial if Dalziel have any hope of staying in West 1 next season. We’re going with Irvine to pick up their first away win of the season, and Dalziel to be pondering a future in West 2.
Media Galleries:
Garnock v Annan
West 2 Update
West 3 Update
See also:
Predictor Challenge update - 24th November 2018
West 2 Update
West 3 Update
West 1 Updates:
20th November 2018
13th November 2018
6th November 2018
29th October 2018
23rd October 2018
15th October 2018
9th October 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment