Waysiders/Drumpellier end season with 100% record

Apr 23 2008 Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser

WAYSIDERS/Drumpellier ended a brilliant season on a high by becoming the only club in Scotland to win every league match.

John Shaw’s side completed the job with a comfortable victory over Oban.

The game itself was put back almost an hour because of traffic problem which made it difficult for Oban to get to Coatbridge.

Once they had arrived the game got under way in extremely windy conditions. W/D lost the toss and were given the wind advantage in the first half.

From the kick-off, the home side piled forward and their first try came from a series of close passes amongst the forwards which eventually found Kieran Packer, who ran over for the try. This was unconverted.

Oban were determined to spoil any celebrations and scored an easy penalty which was awarded for offside.

Again, using the wind conditions, W/D found themselves camped in Oban's 22-metre area. Once again the home forwards set up a maul and released the ball to Armitage, who managed to break through some poor tackles to score under the posts.

This was successfully converted by Phil McKenzie.

Oban found it extremely difficult to break out of their 22 because of the high winds and pressure from the home players. Kieran Parker got the next try when he took possession and managed to score his second try of the day. Again it was successfully converted by McKenzie.

Almost from the Oban kick-off, the W/D captain Neil Logue took possession of the ball and managed to kick it over the visiting players. This allowed David Milne to run through to collect the ball and score the try under the posts. Again McKenzie successfully kicked the conversion.

As the second half began it was apparent that Oban were going to try and use the wind advantage to its fullest. However almost from the second-half kick-off, W/D started the second half as they had finished the first, by scoring tries. Using their strength and fitness, the Langloan men struggled their way into the visitors’ half and with some good interlinking passes by forwards and backs managed to find McArther, who crossed over for another try. Unfortunately this try was unconverted.

For the next 20 minutes, Oban were camped in W/D territory but could not find a way through the excellent defence. However before the final whistle Oban managed to score two consolation converted tries to make the final 31 - 17.

This victory puts W/D top of the table by a fair margin. Their final statistics for the season are impressive with 18 wins out of 18, achieving 14 bonus points out of a possible 18 and their final points tally was 86 points.