Kelso 29 Dundee 46 half time 7-32

I suppose Dundee needed the points more than Kelso in this late season battle, and Kelso’s last away game of the season, and that was how it turned out. We had yet another 11 try extravagancy set before this week and it looked like, as at Twickenham last week, as if the home side was going to run up a hugely embarrassing score.

The first half was one of total dominance by Dundee with an early penalty by Fraser McKay being followed by tries by Ross Aitken, Stuart Barlow, Lewis McNamara and Andrew Hamilton with McKay adding the conversions to all but the third of these. So there we were at 29-0 before Kelso bothered the scoreboard but a try by Matt Kindness, converted by Craig Dods narrowed the gap only for McKay to kick a penalty to take the score to 32-7 at the interval.

The second period of the game started with yet another Dundee try by Stewart Lathangie, with McKay converting again. There followed a fight back by Kelso with Angus Common grabbing a couple of tries before the Taysiders completed their scoring with Kieran D’Aeth’s try and Mackay’s 5th conversion.

A couple of yellow cards against Dundee players helped Kelso’s cause and tries by Cammy Brown, converted by Dods, and replacement, Gregor Miller added a level of respectability to the scoreline and a bonus point to Kelso’s league points.

Kelso are not mathematically out of the woods yet but there would have to be some strange results at the bottom to prevent them playing in National 1 rugby next season with 2 home games still to come against Jed-Forest and Cartha QP.

There is also the little matter of a National Cup semi-final to be played next Saturday against Aberdeen Rugby, just to make the fixture card a bit more congested.   

Kelso team: Murray Hastie; Mark Wilson; Gregor Mein; Matt Kindness; Arran Jackson; Craig Dods;  Phil Hume; Gareth Clark, Michael Downer; Blair Robertson; Alex Thompson; Angus Common; Kevin Dryden, Cammy Brown; Kevin Wilson

Replacements: David Leitch; Kris Mein; Tony Wichary; Gregor Miller; Craig Bruce

Scorers: Matt Kindness, Cammy Brown, Gregor Miller and Angus Common 2  tries and Craig Dods 2 conversions