That great supporter of CS Rugby, Doug Stuart, were he still alive, would have quickly summed up the weather for CS's first ever visit to Old Colfeians' Horn Park ground : dreich. It was a truly miserable afternoon weatherwise, a wet coldness somehow seeping into your very bones, something you felt the more keenly after the invigorating warmth of our hosts' welcome and their excellent lunch.

CS appeared to have learned something from their previous week's experiences in again less than ideal weather conditions and that was just as well too as Colfeians’ play and commitment belied their lowly league position – they were occupying the third relegation spot - to set the Stags a very stern test indeed.

CS drew first blood with a Houstoun penalty and every score in what right from the off looked as if it was destined to be a low scoring game threatened to be significant. A period of home team pressure followed and it took a barnstorming run by CS tight head, Ollie Fulljames to relieve it. Receiving the ball deep in his own half and shrugging off the initial challenge, he surged forward and many hand-offs later he had made it almost all the way but it takes time to swat off would-be tacklers and eventually the home side got enough players back to haul him down just short of the line. Doug Stuart, a tight head himself, would have had the widest of smiles and, had Ollie actually made it , it would surely have been very difficult to see beyond it for try of the season.

As it was it gave CS something of a bridgehead for a while but nothing came of it and indeed both sides seemed quite capable of soaking up whatever was thrown at them. The conditions suited Colfe’s whose strengths clearly lay in their competititive forwards. Play ebbed and flowed with both sides exercising control through multiple phases on occasion before eventually spilling the pill with the heavy surface ruling out any options involving fancy footwork.
That three point lead remained the same for quite some time until Colfe’s, who were once more pounding away, again coughed up the ball which ended up in the hands of CS’s 10, Liam Cleary who had an awful lot of open space in front of him. He appeared to suck in a couple of deep breaths and then set off on a run that saw him slanting more and more to the far corner with OCs’ fleetest of foot on the said heavy surface in pursuit. It was a tantalising mathematical vector problem which your correspondent was trying to work out the solution to as it played out in front of him. In the event a slowing Cleary won but only just.
The Stags had the chance to kill the game off just before half time. Buoyed by the fact that they had enjoyed several outstanding scrums and the home side had just lost a player to the bin, they boldly spurned a very kickable three and went for the scrum option instead. This time the home side bravely held firm without offending and even managed to cause problems at the base and the chance was gone.
Still 8-0 was a not unsatisfactory half-time lead although it was difficult to work out quite what a par score was. The wind although largely across the pitch and blowing into your correspondent’s face in the small open stand was going to favour the home team slightly.
There were some second half alarms, particularly when twice two line-outs were lost in succession in the difficult conditions, some scrum wobbles and certainly when full back Houstoun, who had a very sound game, was forced to carry over when chasing back a particularly well judged kick, but largely CS stuck to the mantra of doing the basics well and keeping the error count down. A further Houstoun penalty on 52 minutes had widened the gap and when the home side missed a fairtly kickable one of their own and latterly had to turn down a further possibly kickable one in search of an elusive try, the writing was on the wall.
The Stags had had to grind this one out but it was that sort of day and they had done the needful as another Scotsman used to say