The future looks bright for Scotland's 9s

London Irish v Edinburgh in the European Challenge Cup quarter finals threw up a tasty clash at nine. Throughout the years Scotland have had a plethora of quality at scrum half, and this game saw two bright Scottish scrum half prospects line up opposite each other.

For Edinburgh, Sam Hidalgo-Clyne who made his breakthrough into the Scotland set up in this year’s 6 Nations. And for London Irish, Scott Steele, the young scrum half who has proven himself against the experience of Tomás O’Leary and Darren Allinson to make the Exiles nine shirt his own.

The two played school boy rugby together, Steele at scrum half and Hidalgo-Clyne at ten, and they have played through the Scotland age groups together, and this friendship made for a fantastic spectacle as they went at each other tooth and nail.

Hidalgo-Clyne, fitting the mold of recent Scottish nines, built an early lead for Edinburgh with the boot, landing 13 points from the tee in a ‘man of the match’ performance. Steele, not so potent from the tee, offered other threats. Stocky with a threatening turn of pace, Steele’s relentless snipes around the fringes kept the Edinburgh defence on their heels, allowing the backline outside him to make inroads in the wider channels.

Steele showed a quick mind as well as his feet to claim a well worked try for Irish in the second half, claiming the lead for the Exiles for the first time in the game. A chip over the top from Shane Geraghty pitted another of London Irish’s bringt young stars Tom Fowlie against the experienced Tim Visser. Fowlie claimed the ball and off loaded to Steele to put the scrum half in at the corner.

Hidalgo-Clyne, not wanting to be out done, played a key part in reclaiming the lead minutes later. The young scrum half showed his pace to burst away from the base of a ruck to push deep into Irish territory and start the move that culminated in Fraser McKenzie crossing for the visitors and Hidalgo-Clyne finished it off with the conversion.

Throughout the game the two school mates went at each other like two terriers, both trying to get an upper hand on their opposite number from tap tackles, to little digs and little nudges off the ball to let their opposite man know they were there.

The two battled away, until Steele was replaced after 70 minutes, in a sub-plot to the main event, both putting in excellent performances and showing the future of Scotland’s nine shirt looks very healthy indeed.

Ultimatley it was Edinburgh that came out on top. With an 18 – 23 final score at the Madejski it was Edinburgh who progressed through to the semi-finals, hosting Newport-Gewnt Dragons at Murrayfield in two weeks time.

“There are a lot of good things we can take away from the game,” said Steele after the game.

“Our try in the first half was pretty special to be fair, so we will take those positives into our remaining matches and try to eliminate the sort of mistakes we made today that ultimately lost us the game.

“I played well last week and picked up a bit of form and carried it into today,” he continue, the young scrum half now having scored in back-to-back matches.

“Yes it is good to play well but it was the result we were after at the end of the day.

“I was really up for it, playing against Sam there was a bit of confrontation out there and a bit of chat going back and forth so it was really good but obviously I’m disappointed about the result but that is just the way it goes some times.”