IT IS time to take a snapshot of the health of Scottish rugby. The national team had a mixed, but mainly encouraging season; the pro teams have seen their seasons fade to black; now it is the chance to take a look at the state of the club scene with the two main finals, the BT Premiership on Saturday and the BT Cup a week later.
For Melrose, who already hold the Charity Shield they won at the start of the season, it could be the start of a remarkable run. If they can capture both the League and the Cup and then go on to beat Gala in the Borders League final, that would be four trophies in one season and no competition for the team of the season.
Rob Chrystie, the Melrose coach, however, it taking nothing for granted. They are facing Ayr in both the main finals and he knows how little has separated the two sides over recent seasons.
"This is what it is all about, this is what you do it for," he enthused. "The format is that the Premiership is now a knockout tournament, which is good. It is good for the game, exciting. I hope we will get a good crowd on the back of it.
"You look at the history of the tournament and the finals have all been close games. Heriot's won the first in the last move of the game, last year up at Ayr, when Heriot's won again, it was also really tight.
"I'm sure it will be [tight] again – it is the old cliche about small margins. I just hope someone in our shirt does something really good win it rather than somebody makes a mistake."
Coming off the back of pushing a strong Harlequins side all the way in the final of their own Sevens tournament last weekend, Melrose have every right to feel confident. They may not get the daily training that the professionals do, but Chrystie believes there is plenty of talent in his squad and that teams like his and Ayr are doing their jobs in pushing it through to the next level.
With only to professional teams it is up to clubs like Melrose and Ayr to develop the young talent and deliver it to the higher level in a fit state to compete. They also act as a staging post for the professional players coming back from injury or needing a game for some other reason.
"In Scotland, there is a bit of a lack of opportunity because there are only two pro teams," Chrystie pointed out. "Given the opportunities, put into that [professional] environment, you never quite know how people will react but a lot of our players definitely have the ability – you saw that on Saturday when we went head-to-head with a decent Harlequins side.
"The last time Ayr played here was a good game, good advert for the club game. They had two Scotland internationals [Pat MacArthur and Adam Ashe] playing for them, we had an aspiring pro in Lewis Carmichael. The standard of that game was really, really high.
"I am sure they [MacArthur and Ashe] would agree it was a really good game for them to use to push on and get back into the Glasgow team. We work as hard as we can with the pro teams, we work alongside them and give their players an opportunity to prepare well and push on to state their cases."
One player who will be hoping to do just that is Lewis Anderson, the Ayr hooker, who has seen more than half a dozen of the Under 20s squad he was part of push on to full contracts with Adam Hasting and Ally Miller the latest to sign up at Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively.
"Seeing these guys up close shows you what you need to move on to that next level and this BT Premiership final is an ideal stage for us to show what we can do," he added.
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