East Kilbride Rugby Club stepped up preparations for their opening league encounter in three weeks with an encouraging friendly victory at Whitecraigs.
The fact that the Newton Mearns side will be plying their trade two divisions above EK will make Saturday’s performance all the more pleasing for coach Allan Steel.
Further, the visitors were comfortably the better side and never really looked like losing, despite being without a number of front-line players.
In terms of scoring, the highlight was a hat-trick for Aiden Stott.
The young centre played every minute of every game last season but could not have pointed anyone in the direction of the try-line, such was his unfamiliarity.
On Saturday he switched from assisting to being the beneficiary, with his third try – he tracked Chris O’Neil’s run for fully 90 metres before accepting the scoring pass – rich reward for his week-in, week-out graft.
Younger members of the squad were given hefty chunks of game time, too.
Ally Marriot raised a few eyebrows with an outstanding shift in the front row while Matthew Smith at scrum-half may not yet display the game management of first choice Mark Ellison, but certainly showed his ability to break from anywhere on the field.
Steel will not be getting carried away, however.
Pre-season often tells lies and catches people out when teams get down to the real business of league rugby.
Still and away though, Steel will have been pretty satisfied with a good initial hit out.
Next up are Linlithgow at Torrance House on Saturday in their final friendly before the club head away to Inverary for a pre-season training camp on August 24, bidding to fine-tune things ahead of the competitive action.
They kick-off the season on August 31 when they take on Garnock in the preliminary round of the Regional Shield at Torrance House.
• Meanwhile, East Kilbride’s second string are picking up their preparations as well.
They will play host to Uddingston in a friendly on Saturday before joining the training camp the following week.
