Wordsmith of the Week

When Ally Warnock left the club to join the professional ranks at the end of last season, the big question on everyone’s lips as the new campaign approached was that of the vacant No. 10 shirt and who its new occupant would be. Many names were mooted, as was the possibility that the coaches would opt to bring someone in from overseas. As the first few weeks of  the season unfolded,  however,  Alan Sievewright emerged as the man to fill the hole. “Paki and Bruce spoke to me in July and said that they didn’t intend bringing anyone else in, so I’d have to do more training and such, but it’s been really good fun being involved so much and I feel I’ve been playing reasonably well. Obviously there are always areas to improve upon and I’m sure all the boys would agree that I could stand to get a bit fitter and contribute more over the eighty minutes, but I’m quite happy with how I’ve performed up until now.”

Sievewright, now 26, joined the club in his early twenties, initially as a remedy for an ever growing beer belly. “I started playing rugby when I was probably seven. My old boy took me down Saturday morning and dumped me, told me he’d be back in a few hours. And did that every Saturday and Sunday until I was in third year at university, so I played for Stirling until I was about twenty. In fourth year I put my studies first and went and played for Edinburgh Uni for a year which was really, really good fun, playing twice a week and having a great laugh. I started work with Ernst & Young who are accountants in Edinburgh it got to about the October and I was finding myself in the pub on Fridays and Saturdays, putting on weight and getting particularly unfit so I came down here. I knew guys like Cadzow and Tommy Lightoller and Robbie from university and they thought it’d be a good idea for me to come down, so I did. I made my first appearance for the 3rds, playing alongside CT through in Glasgow and just haven’t looked back since then.”

After helping the side become the first to retain the BT Cellnet Cup with a win over Melrose, which he sees as his best moment at the club, Sivvy tasted double success with the 2^nd XV as they claimed back to back league titles. “Over the last two seasons, the two league wins were really, really good. We had a really good core of guys. It was something that Bruce, myself and Arthur realised, that we had to have ten guys playing every week. With guys coming up and guys going down, but we had to have that core of ten in key positions and we managed to get that, especially the first year we won the league. The team almost named itself week in week out, partly because the 1^sts were doing so well and didn’t want to make changes, we had the same guys and we were playing some phenomenal rugby. In the 1^st XV now, you’ve got guys like Euan Matheson, who’s played really well in the first half of this season, Stephen Ruddick was playing in the 2s at that time, Steve Briers was with us for some of that, obviously Matt Morrell’s left now but he was playing in the 2s as well, so we had a great, great back division and the forwards got us more than enough ball to work with. It’s a bit disappointing that they’re not quite doing as well as they’d like to, but they’re victims of the fact that we’ve lost as many players as we have because people have had to move up to the 1^sts.”

And it is that loss of players which Alan pinpoints as the reason that the 1^st XV have struggled to match the highs of last season. “The fact that we lost maybe seven players has had a big effect on us this year. Not only the number we lost, but where we lost them as well. We lost 6, 9, 10, 12. There you’ve lost your whole midfield three, and that’s especially tough when you’ve got two guys who are now in the Scotland training squad for the Six Nations and Lindsey Graham, who’s massively experienced at 32. And there’s Reidy. An immense player and such a presence on the field. There’s guys like Nessy as well. He hasn’t played at all this season and he was in phenomenal form in the pre-season. So really this season is a bedding down of a very, very new team and I think it’s coming together. It’s been frustrating that in the last five or ten minutes of games we’ve not been able to turn five or ten point deficits into victories which we were very good at doing last year. We ground out a lot of pretty tough victories. It’s very, very close, it’s just the odd decision here and there, the odd bounce of the ball. Honestly, if we do finish second, I think that will have been a good year considering the number of changes in personnel we’ve had.”

And of course, that change in personnel includes the addition of a new coach in Bruce Reekie. Last season Bruce helped take the 2^nd XV to the title and when Sean Lineen stepped up into the professional game with Glasgow, Reekie made the step up at ‘Muir. “I think Bruce has settled in really well. It’s sort of a balancing act. Bruce is intense, but he’s not quite as intense and emotional as Paki and therefore he can bring a different perspective. He’s fairly softly spoken but what he says is usually pretty much on the button. He’s a really experienced guy, it’s maybe a wee bit harder for me because obviously I had the pleasure of playing with him towards the end of his career so it’s a wee bit tougher. It’s really hard when he tells you to go and do a really hard tackling session to look him in the eye in the knowledge that he would have hated that more than anything when he was playing. He’s very, very calm, very analytical. His business background helps him out in terms of how he deals with people, he’s a very, very good man manager. He’s good at explaining why people have been left out and what they can do to get back in, which is really good as a player.”

Despite being only in his mid-twenties, Alan has played with some wonderful players and picked out some from both Boroughmuir and Stirling as amongst his favourites to have been alongside. “Obviously Starky would be up there. Because he went on the pitch to win, but also to have a good time. A good guy to have on your team. I played with him in the final few years of his career, but he still could finish and how he only got a handful of caps for Scotland is bizarre to me when you’ve got players like Kenny Logan getting over 50. Hobbes was obviously superb when he was playing here. The fact that he’s not played too much rugby of late has not been too good for him. Also, a guy called Stuart Hamilton when I started playing was a big presence and certainly the older guys like Grant Wilson and Bruce and Paki would remember playing against him. He was a huge, huge guy. He was captain of Stirling when I started playing and probably the other guy would be Iain Jardine who had phenomenal defence. A very strong runner and a great guy to have in your team”.

Though few, including himself, would have expected Alan to play such an important role for the 1^st XV this season, few could now argue for anyone but the diminutive fly half filling the gap left by Ally Warnock’s rise through the rugby ranks. It is players like Sievewright who have needed this season to bed down into the team and if they can be kept together for next season, the hope of regaining the title would surely not be in vain.