Caithness coach delighted at away win
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CAITHNESS coach Donald MacIntosh was happy enough to chalk up a first competitive victory under his watch in Saturday’s opening RBS Caley one league match.
But he was left stumped how his charges required two late penalties to secure the 21-15 victory over visitors Glenrothes.
He took his charges to task for taking the collective foot off the gas after a highly promising opening spell.
He said: “We went a try up and went on to play really well for the first 15 to 20 minutes when we were rarely out of their 22. We then seemed to sit back and somehow think that we had the game in the bag.
“They came back at us and we ended up having to rely on two late penalties to come away with the win.”
MacIntosh believes if his squad had maintained its early tempo and momentum, it could have gone on to win by 30 or so points.
“We need to learn we cannot just switch off,” said the coach. “Because we didn’t keep up the standards we set early on, we let them back into the game and ended up having to steal the win with the late penalties.
Saying that, it was good to get a victory under our belts.”
Tomorrow the Greens travel to meet Aberdeen University. Their opponents had to call off their scheduled trip to Inverness to play Highland on Saturday because many of their players had not returned for the start of the new term.
Greens centre Norman Foubister and lock forward Roddy Gray are back offshore and scrum half Graham Fryer could be similarly unavailable.
The game might come just too soon for forward Grant Anderson while former skipper Andy Morris remains out with a rib complaint.
MacIntosh said: “We’ll have a few players missing but we’ll be giving it a real go as an away win is worth its weight in gold.”
Mackie Academy FPs produced a storming comeback to score an impressive 26-23 away win over Gordonians on Saturday.
Elsewhere, Aberdeenshire edged to a 8-3 win over Orkney and Hillfoots defeated Strathmore 30-13.
