Having waited for nearly four long seasons, another week shouldn’t be too difficult to endure.
Promotion is surely going to come at long last for Howe of Fife this Saturday when they play Aberdeenshire at Duffus Park in their final BT National League Two game of the season, and if they win they will go up with the team that defeated them on Saturday, champions Musselburgh.
After being short of the title by a point in the last two seasons, and a title win three seasons ago not bringing promotion because of league restructuring, Howe’s battles to get out of the third tier of Scottish club rugby and into the second have become something of an ordeal.
No team in all of club rugby has scored as many points in those four years as them, and just this year in cup competition they beat GHA who earned a play-off chance at promotion to the Premiership on Saturday by virtue of their narrow win at Dundee HSFP while also giving Premiership title favourites Heriot’s a thorough fright.
They’ve won friends across the country with their style of play, and the fact that they are a team almost wholly grown within their own community from the youth system that has produced two recent Scotland caps and three players in the current Scotland Under-20s set-up.
But Musselburgh took the game and the NL2 title 32-20 deservedly, it must be said on Saturday, and it was maybe a microcosm of Howe’s dilemma when they do make the step up.
That is, do they stick with the largely home grown philosophy, or do they try to attract players from outwith the North East Fife region, specifically the bigger men they need to keep progressing?
Without a couple of their bigger ballast players on Saturday usual hooker Graham Steedman had to play second row Howe were outmatched physically by the huge Musselburgh pack, even after getting a 12-0 start.
Burgh were attacking with intent inside the Howe 22 within the first five minutes against the wind when a split ball was snatched up by Chris Mason and transferred in a flash to full-back Graham Thomson.
Next thing the home players knew they were gathering under their own posts as the experienced full-back ran 70 metres before giving the easy score to wing Will Wardlaw.
A few minutes later, Howe used the wind to put more pressure on and Wardlaw steamed in under the posts from a lovely short ball from Dom Martin.
But even then you had the feeling that Burgh had the measure in the tight and even more so in retention of the ball they were barely to spill it again all day, and Howe were starved of any possession.
Impressive scrum-half Danny Owenson bagged a try from a scrum pushover, and made light of the difficult wind with his outstanding kicking.
Constant pressure forced Howe on the back foot, and a Martin penalty was all they managed in the middle two quarters of the match as Burgh scored three more tries despite desperate scrambling defence.
In the final quarter former Glasgow pro Hefin O’Hare gave Howe a lift with direct running as Musselburgh started to feel the pace.
Fraser Clark burst in for a third try, meaning that one more would mean two bonus points and give Howe a sniff of stealing the title in their final game next week, but despite a yellow card for home wing Rory Watt it was not to be, and the home side deservedly held on.
So now Howe have to beat Aberdeenshire who they defeated 43-18 in Aberdeen in September to secure the other promotion spot, but head coach Garry Horne and his backroom team have some thinking to do.
Some lads who tried their luck elsewhere in club rugby will probably come back to the Howe if they make NL1, because there’s that strong a community bond there.
But they probably still need a big lock to go with Terry Turpie and some different options in the front row.
The present team will be competitive in the second tier.
An augmented team could be in with a chance of getting to the first tier.