Kelso 33 Melrose 30 half time 19-8
The day started on a note of sadness with a minutes silence for Jimmy Jeffrey, father of John, and Alan (Dod)Jeffrey who played in the Championship winning side in the late 80s.
Things improved for Kelso straight away in the game as they hit their visitors with three tries early in the game through Frankie Robson, Andrew Ford and then Robson again. Craig Dods converted the first and third of these tries.

Melrose opened their account with a penalty through Donald Crawford and a try by the talented Kieran Clark to take the half time score to 19-8 to the hosts. Paudie Lawlor stretched the lead with a try which was converted by Dods. Melrose ate away at the lead with a try by Ruaridh Lindsay. Crawford converted but Kelso responded through a Dwain Patterson try which was again converted by Dods.
So Kelso looked home and dry with an 18 point lead but a resurgence from Melrose produced initially
another Crawford penalty Followed by a Gavin McWilliam try. The scoring was completed by Clark with his second try. Crawford converted to narrow the gap to just 3 points and then Kelso had to hold on for the last 5 minutes whilst under great pressure by the visitors. Hold on they did despite having 2 players on yellow cards during the game: Paudie Lawlor and Kevin Dryden.
This 5 pointer allowed Kelso to overtake Ayr in the league to take them coincidentally up to 33 points giving them clear water over Boroughmuir and Dundee High being 15 and 22 points ahead of them respectively with them being only 5 or 6 games left in the season. Kelso have had a relatively good month with wins over both Gala and Melrose in January. That’s not happened for a long time.

Kelso team: Murray Hastie; Mark Wilson; Frankie Robson;Andrew Thomson; Dwain Patterson, Craig Dods , Andy Tait;; Andrew Ford Euan Knox, Gareth Clark; Alexander Thompson, Angus Common, Fergus Common , Archie Cowens, Kevin Dryden
Replacements: Allan Frame, Scott Hilton, Gareth Walker, Paudie Lawlor, Arran Jackson
Scorers: Frankie Robson 2 tries, Andrew Ford, Paudie Lawlor and Dwain Patterson tries Craig Dods 4 conversions