Highland mark hero's passing with victories
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HIGHLAND paid the ultimate respect to departed hero Colin High as all teams recorded weekend victories.
The first team’s fixture against Orkney was postponed to allow them to attend High’s funeral at Inverness Crematorium on Friday but the youth teams did the club proud with impressive wins.
The club got back to business as the 2nd XV and under-18s travelled to Mackie Academy for a pair of league fixtures.
The 2nd XV travelled with only 13 players due to a large number of late call-offs.
The squad arrived in good spirits and were keen to make a go of things. Mackie were also struggling for numbers and made up the side with some 1st XV and over-35 players drafted in.
From the kick-off Highland’s fitness and ability was clearly superior and the home side could not live with them.
Despite this the lack of two players meant that all of the tries had to be worked for.
A total of 11 tries were run in for a final score of 63-0 for Highland with four conversions.
Man of the match and pack leader Ben Gordon scored four tries while skipper for the day Matt Allan led his young side well.
There were a couple of old heads who lent their experience to the younger players.
It was not the way the coaches James Hay and Alastair McKenzie would have like to have prepared for the game, but the skills and determination shown by the players bodes well for the season.
Earlier the under-18s kicked off and they were given the target by their coaches of maintaining the intensity of play for the entire match.
Against an understrength Ellon they slackened off quite a bit and the plan was not to do this against what was a similar Mackie Academy side.
This is exactly what the players delivered for a 79-17 victory.
Murdo Paterson opened the scoring with a try between the posts making the conversion easy for Fionnlagh Call for a 7-0 lead.
Call was next to score after being put through by Ewan Milton and this was quickly added to with tries from Iain Crush and Milton with a conversion from Call to make the score 24-0 after 20 minutes.
Ellon got points following a very clever cross field kick and an equally fine conversion, yet this did not upset Highland who stuck to their game plan and powered back.
They got tries from Will Davidson and a second from Paterson, both converted by Call, who also picked up his second unconverted try for a 43-7 half-time score in favour of the rampant visitors.
Highland continued to dominate in the second-half and it was not long before Jake Mills finished well in the corner with a fine conversion by Call to follow.
Milton got his second unconverted try for 55-7 just as the home side hit a good spell.
Mackie put in a nice attack for a converted try followed up by a penalty to make it 55-17.
Highland struck again soon after, however, Mills touching down in the corner minutes after having a try disallowed and this was followed by a first try of the season for Harris Ross.
The home side were definitely tiring as the pressure was maintained and Crush picked up his second try, while Call got his third.
With both converted by Call the final score finished 79-17 to an impressive Highland team.
On Sunday the sides in action completed a third weekend on the trot with all squads winning as the under-15s dominated Ross Sutherland at Canal Park to win by a comfortable 54-0 scoreline.
The under-14s and under-13s both travelled to Aberdeen Wanderers and ended up playing as a combined squad as Wanderers struggled to find the numbers to field two separate sides.
In a game that was played in four 15-minute periods, Highland came out narrow 31-29 winners in a tight encounter.
