Stirling County 14/09/2023
The Blues headed to Bridgehaugh to play Stirling County for the re-arranged fixture that had been cancelled due to last weekend’s heavy rain.
The question was what Kirkcaldy side would turn up, in what has so far been a Jeckyll and Hyde season performance wise.

Within the first few minutes the Blues found themselves a try down despite sending out a message at the first scrum the pack were taking no prisoners. Indeed, the Blues exerted pressure on County and Marcus Salt scored under the posts and after a converted try it was all square.
What was obvious was that we were up against a very well drilled side who although were toiling at scrum time were very dominant in the tackle, counter rucking effectively and put on a display of very attractive rugby for around 25 minutes that we failed to live with.

The scoreboard ticked over as County played to their strengths and our weaknesses on the day and stretched their lead to 32-7. After another strong scrum on the County 22, some smart play led to a second Blues try from Finlay Smith which he duly converted. This was followed thereafter by some chat to the referee which duly cost the Blues 10m of territory and a try for County which due to some inept defending left the scoreboard showing 39-14 at half time.

The second period began and Blues forwards put some pressure on the County defence which led to another big shove from the pack and the resultant play led to good possession that put Blues in for their third try and a second from Marcus Salt bringing the score to 39-19.
A penalty conceded was duly converted and County stretched their lead to 42-19. Again following some decent work by the forwards a lovely bit of handling providing Connor Wood an opportunity to dive in to put Blues in for another try 42-26.

Another converted try for County made it 49-26 at the final whistle, which brought a strangely shortened second half to an end.
So another up and down performance from the Blues who despite not playing particularly well for periods in the game, managed to score four tries away from home and gain a valuable losing bonus point.

The Blues know where they were lacking today, and this was a very decent County side, so no lectures required, regroup time, get training together and sort out the areas where we are non¬- competitive, wasteful and things will look so different, because when we are good, we are hard to play against.