Strathendrick 91 - 0 Milbrae

Millbrae, the visitors from Ayr, had a noticeable weight advantage over Strathendrick.

When the sides lined up for Saturday's match at Fintry it was obvious that Millbrae, the visitors from Ayr, had a noticeable weight advantage over Endrick. The home support just hoped that their favourites would manage to overcome that and the conditions - ground soft and a wind swirling and gusting from strong to almost gale force. It certainly did not look like a day to favour the running and passing game which was what Endrick wanted. The home players managed to play their own game, snuff out the visitors and round off their efforts with 15 tries to return the highest score of the day in league games.

Endrick got off to a flying start, Rory McLaughlin racing in for the opening try with less than a minute played. Kyle Campbell kicked the conversion as he did only seven minutes later when Ruaraidh Doyle beat the visiting cover to gather a neat kick into space from full back Luke Pretorius.

Play continued in Millbrae territory but the score remained unchanged until 20 minutes had gone. Then the floodgates opened with five Endrick tries coming at regular intervals. All were well worked, the outcome of good handling, decisive running and excellent support play. The scorers in that devastating spell were Angus North (20 minutes), Ruaraidh Doyle (22 minutes), Rory McLaughlin (25 minutes), Conor Gibson (34 minutes) and Neil Callander (37 minutes). Kyle Campbell made light of the tricky underfoot conditions and fluky wind to take his contribution up to five conversions so that for the second successive week Endrick had a 45-0 lead at the break.

The second half proved to be very much a repetition of the first half, starting with another first minute try, the scorer Fraser Graham. Scoring continued like clockwork, the second half total exceeding the first by one. The other second half scorers were Doug Beaumont (46 minutes), Angus North (48 minutes), Mark Scott (52 minutes), Conor Gibson (57 minutes), Rory McLaughlin (61 and 77 minutes) and Duncan McEachern (68 minutes).Kyle Campbell did not find the strong wind blowing diagonally in the second half much to his liking and he added only three conversions to his total.

Endrick gave their replacements a run in the second half and there was a special cheer for Sandy Cuthbertson when he went on for the last 20 minutes, Sandy made his Strathendrick 1st team debut on 14th April 1976 in a friendly match against Bellahouston 3rds. That was only the 16th game played by Endrick.

It was a quite remarkable result and will no doubt be remembered for the quality of the attacking play. It should be noted that when Millbrae had the ball they made little progress against a lighter side who hardly missed a tackle all afternoon.

Endrick can expect a more testing time on Saturday when they travel to Cumbernauld on league business. The kick-off is at 2 o'clock. Endrick 2nds are also at Cumbernauld.

TY