Garry Horne and the coaching team at Howe of Fife set their standards pretty high, but the players’ are higher, it seems.
“They’re sitting in the huddle there moaning about their performance,” said Horne at the completion of Howe’s nine-try rout of Livingston in their first home RBS Championship game. “It can only be good when you score 60 points but the guys aren’t satisfied.”
Actually, even in the midst of a 61-10 landslide, you could see what they were getting at. Cruelly and narrowly denied promotion at the end of last season, Howe’s ambitions are well beyond the third tier of Scottish club rugby and hence the standards being applied.
Furthermore, Howe’s ambition is to get to the top playing entertaining, open rugby and with an almost entirely home-grown outfit, even if they are still a target for cherry-pickers from the leagues above.
Thus the opening half-hour where they created opportunities but frittered away possession and played a little disjointedly was much more in their minds than the deluge of scores that followed as things gradually clicked.
The early rustiness which also infected the loss to Jed-Forest last week is explic-able by the fact that, by the normal calendar, Howe would probably be looking to play their first league match this weekend.
“We had a bunch of guys who were at a wedding in the US and literally stepped off the plane to play last week,” said Horne. “It’s been an early start and we’re taking time to get started, but this week was a huge step up from last week.”
Howe’s main deficiency in recent times has been a physical deficit they’ve worked around with the technical skills and execution their players are taught from the minute they enter the club at minis and practised all the way up through their consistently excellent age-group teams to the first XV.
That would appear to be less of an issue these days with imposing specimens like Terry Turpie and Rory Drummond now regulars, and their back-line has a beefiness about it now with no detriment to pace.
Anchored by the long-established hinge of skipper Chris Mason and scrum-half Stewart Lathangie, Howe play a slick game of off-loading and outstanding support running.
“We’re looking to off-load as much as possible but the order is that it has to be a 70-30 minimum chance,” said Horne. “Early on we were a bit frantic but if we can keep the ball alive it puts so much pressure on the opposition.”
Howe’s other weapon is the brute force of Drummond, an imposing athletic specimen who has taken a little time to find his role but brought the plaintive cry from a Living-ston supporter in the stand “how many tacklers does it take to bring him down?”
Three was the average, and he is a devastating attacking force at this level.
“Rory’s always had the power and pace and he loves to take on tacklers and beat them off,” said Horne. “What’s better about him now is his ball retention, he used to beat four people and then cough it up, now he’s sucking in tacklers, making space for others and getting the ball away.”
The other bonus for Howe is the return of some players who left for a higher level, notably Andy McLean and Iain Wilson although both presently injured who have come back from Dundee HSFP, and Chris Martin from Watsonians.
The three Martin brothers were outstanding in the backline and Murray Calcuttwandered on as a replacement to score a second-half hat-trick. Centres Girvan Imrie and Fraser Clark, Lathangie, Chris Martin, Drummond and Turpie scored the other tries. And true to Howe’s recent traditions, only open-side James Lawrie, from distant Dunfermline, was the only player not from the Cupar area in the team.
It’s not just locals who hope that this proper “town team” can make it to the top.