South of Scotland seconds make comeback and organisers now hoping for more games in years to come

The return of the South’s second string follows on from last season’s comeback for the Border junior league and it’s now hoped that they’ll go on to compete with other district development sides in years to come.

Last week’s comeback saw them beaten 33-29 at Jedburgh’s Riverside Park by an invitational XV from Kielder’s Border Park in front of a crowd of more than 200.

Named the South District Union and made up of Border junior league regulars coached by Melrose’s Nick Beavon and Callum Anderson, Hawick Force, the junior league’s champions and cup-winners, accounted for six of the hosts’ starting XV – Fergus Bell at hooker, lock Murray Renwick as captain, Hughie Donaldson at openside flanker, Bailey Donaldson at inside centre, James Delaney at outside centre and Finlay Douglas on the right wing.

Melrose Storm contributed three starters – Andrew Kirk at tighthead prop, Scott Clark at scrum-half and Harry Makowski at full-back.

Selkirk A and Jed-Forest A were represented by two players each, the former’s Ross McFadzen at loosehead prop and Ruaridh Murray at lock, and the latter’s Hamish Stenhouse at blindside flanker and Brodie Irvine on the left wing.

They were joined by Peebles Reds’ Jay Coltman at No 8 and Gala A’s Russell Kerr at fly-half, with Gala’s Eddie Eyre, Hawick’s Owain Gray, Selkirk’s Daniel Main, Melrose’s Hamish Derrick, Peebles’ Lewis Copeland and Ru Smith and Kelso Sharks’ Andrew Sweenie and Duncan Smith as replacements.

There were also two Borderers among their visitors’ starting XV, Kelso’s Murray McGregor and Earlston’s Nathan Chisholm, with Jed-Forest’s Ryan Briggs on the bench.

Makowski at the double, Coltman, Renwick and Hughie Donaldson scored the Borders’ tries, with Bailey Donaldson adding two conversions.

Touching down for their Northumbrian visitors were Ben Bell, Michael Searle twice, Jon Devereux and Tom Helliwell, with captain Searle also kicking four conversions.

Referee Iain Heard was chairman of the steering group that organised Friday’s game and he was delighted to see the red-and-white-hooped regional team’s seconds back in action, saying: “It was brilliant.

“It was good to see guys out playing at that level and getting a bit of representative rugby.

"Whilst the result dd not go the way of the SDU team, they were a great credit to the jersey, and considering they only had two training sessions, they worked together extremely well as a squad and were able to show the level of talent within the Border junior league.

“Hopefully next season will bring more opportunities for players at that level to gain representative honours.

“We invited just over 30 players to training and that went really well and the appetite from the players was good too. They seemed to enjoy it and I think they’d be keen to do it again if we can organise something.”

Heard’s hoping the SDU will get to go up against representatives of Scotland’s three other districts – Edinburgh, Caledonia Reds and Glasgow and the West – next year but he’d be happy to see them take on further invitational outfits instead if a shadow championship can’t be brought back in that timescale.

“We’ve not made any approaches formally yet to the other districts but there’s been a bit of interest and there’ve been a few quite positive comments from people involved in their set-ups,” he said.

“It all depends on next season’s structure and how the end of the Super6 affects things.

“I’d be pretty confident that we can at least get to play Border Park again, maybe on a home-and-away basis.

“Now it’s happened, it shows we can get games on – it’s now just a case of trying to attract otther teams to play us.

“We need like-minded people in the other areas or, alternatively, someone central saying this is who’ll be playing and where.”

The 54-year-old hadn’t originally expected to see the SDU return until 2025 but such was the enthusiasm for the initiative that they managed to fit in a one-off appearance ahead of schedule.

“When we sat down at the start of the season to sort out the return of the Border junior league for second VXs, some of us thought it would be a good idea to have a representative game too,” he recalled.

“We said ‘let’s see how we get on this season and maybe we’ll look at that for next year’, but that idea sort of grew arms and legs through the season and we decided to try it this year and we managed it, thanks to a lot of hard work.”

Another idea being bandied around is putting together an SDU sevens team to take part in club tournaments next year, as the South’s seniors have done in the past.

“Another thing we have looked is potentially when teams drop out, we could have an SDU VII rather than a president’s VII, but that’s not come off for this year, though it could for the future potentially,” said Heard.

“Another difficulty with that would be that quite a few of the boys involved in the SDU play sevens for their clubs, so that might restrict things, but the union used to take into account Hawick Linden, Hawick Harlequins, Gala YM and Earlston, so there could be other players to pick from as well if needed.”