On a glorious day in the sun, the Braidholm 7s served up another exciting afternoon of rugby which culminated in a repeat of last year’s final between GHA and select side the Minerva Builders who fielded a mixture of Ayr and Glasgow Hawks stars. This time however the result went in favour of the home team as they ran out winners by 33 to 19 with a gutsy performance.
GHA defeated Glasgow University based side the Yellow Bellied Lizards in their semi final, surviving a precarious situation where they were down to 5 men having lost two players to the sin bin in the same incident. In the other semi final, Minerva Builders defeated French club side Orsay whose mixture of latin flair and brawn was not enough to overcome the classy Builders outfit.
In a highly entertaining final, Minerva scored first with a try to Peter Jericevich from the first kick off. GHA centre Ross McClymont had pulled a hamstring in the semi final, as did young winger Andrew Spowart in the first round meaning that GHA recruited the services of Orsay playmaker Romain Lombard for the final. This proved a shrewd acquisition as the young Frenchmen put in a mercurial performance scoring GHA’s first try which was a leading contender for try of the tournament – a dummy through the legs, a shimmy through a gap, pirouette and final side step to take him in under the posts. GHA scored a second when winger Rangi Jericevich grubbered up the wing then hacked on again and beat the cover defense to the touchdown and Hefin O’Hare scored another to give GHA the half time lead.
GHA scored early in the second period when Alan Auld finished off a foray from Grant MacDonald up the the left hand touchline and a 5th when Rangi finished off an Alan Auld break. Minerva scored two themselves through forward Grant Strang to stay in touch but the GHA defense was solid and scrambled well to prevent the come back.