SOMETIMES a final scoreline only tells part of the story of a match and this Bayhead battering received by Stornoway RFU under 15s doesn’t reveal the litres of sweat, determination and desire which the youngsters poured onto the turf against their far more experience Tayside guests.

And it wasn’t just inexperience in which most of the Dundee Eagles towered above the Stornoway starlets as many of them were far bigger in size too as the two sides clashed in the Caledonian under 15 Cup.

Dundee dazzled in a dominant first-half to rack up an unassailable lead as early as halftime so the Island side could have been forgiven had their young heads gone down. But the truth is that the Stornoway side were giving as good as they got and were far more competitive than the score suggests.

They may have lost a number of tries but the visitors had to work extremely hard to get them.

Ian Murdo Macleod was Stornoway’s consolation scorer and worked tirelessly all day, he had to, as Stornoway only had 14 players.

He and David Campbell were the stand out players for the home side but it was the team performance that captured everyone’s attention.

Yes, they were certainly against it in the physical sense but that didn’t put any of them off. Indeed the Dundee outfit realised early on that if they were to score they would have to run round the Stornoway defence, because they certainly weren’t going through them.

The spine of the visiting side did the damage. There was a great understanding between 8, 9 and 10 and this saw them create continuous pressure on the home defence.

It’s no surprise, this was a talented young side that have clearly been together and gained valuable experience, for some time.

The visiting coaches were gracious in their appraisal of the Stornoway side, again commenting on the rather false looking scoreline. While they move on in the competition Stornoway will now look to continue their development and must not be disheartened by this result.

There were many positives to be taken from the match and the coaches will be looking on these in the coming weeks.