Dunfermline 19 Hillfoots 5

DUNFERMLINE earned their sixth league win from seven games after a hard-fought success against Hillfoots on Saturday.

Mark Dobson’s side remain second in the table and victory for the first XV was achieved on an historic day for the club as, for the first time since the 1980s, they fielded four senior teams.

That pleased Dobson as equally as the manner of his side’s win against their Tillicoultry-based opponents, which was achieved after playing the majority of the match with just 14 players.

Matthew Wilson’s converted try, and penalties from Adam Fraser and Calum Allardice, saw them home despite Danny Morrison’s first-half sending off, as well as the sin-binning of Martin Punter after the break, and Dobson commented: “It was a tough fixture and we had to grind out a win, in a different way that we have been used to over the last seven or eight games.

“Unfortunately, we lost our hooker, Danny Morrison, early on and all of a sudden our scrum and lineout, which gives you a strong platform to play off, becomes disrupted by the opposition.

“I have to applaud the way the guys took the result under the circumstances and, if we find ourselves in a difficult situation in the future, we can reflect back to not conceding any points with 13 men and take confidence from that.”

There were wins for the second, third and fourth XVs against Perthshire, Ferry Road Wanderers and Glasgow Alphas respectively, and Dobson added: “Probably the biggest achievement at the weekend was that we managed to field four senior teams and, when you add the colts into the mix, then we fielded over 100 players.

“The majority of Scottish clubs are losing players but we’re bucking the trend.”