Highland aim to heap pressure on idle National 1 rugby rivals Gala by securing maximum points at Dundee on Saturday.
The Inverness side ran out 26-15 victors at Aberdeen Grammar last weekend, which was a result which sent their hosts spinning to a second successive demotion as they will kick off next term in National League Two.
Fifth-placed Highland built upon their 34-22 victory against Watsonian by seeing off their north opponents and their full focus turns to their trip to Tayside.
This was a fixture frozen off just before Christmas and Dundee, who are only two places below Carson’s team.
A sign of the Taysiders’ qualities was evident at the weekend when they only lost 33-27 against Premiership opponents Glasgow Hawks in the Scottish Cup.
Highland defeated Dundee 35-22 in September at Canal Park and they will be eager to record a win in this, their penultimate match of the season, to keep Gala within striking range.
Side five points closer to tally target
Carson knows their weekend hosts will fight for every ball as they chase their third successive victory to cut into the six-point advantage Gala have over them.
He said: “It will be tough away to Dundee. Their close game against Glasgow Hawks on Saturday shows they have found a bit of form and seem to be going pretty well.
“When we played Dundee up here, we scored some good tries, but like a lot of sides in this league, you never get away from them. All these teams fight for 80 minutes and they keep coming back at you and that was certainly the case against Dundee at Canal Park.
“I wasn’t too pleased with the performance overall last week, but I’m delighted to get five points away from home again.
“We’ve taken the first 10 points from the 20 we asked the players for. There are 10 more points to play for – we’re nearly there.”
Carson keen to make Gala feel heat
After a free weekend, Gala will travel to Aberdeen Grammar on April 15, with Highland hosting table-toppers Kelso on the same afternoon to round off their league schedule.
One week later, Gala will take on current title-hunters Ayr in their last game.
Carson said: “It gives us a chance, if we win, to move closer to Gala, who will have two games left. It might put a bit of pressure on them.
“We just need to do our job and get the maximum points if we can and let’s see what happens.
“We finished sixth last year and we’ve already passed the number of wins we got. We’re looking for improvement and if we can finish fourth with more victories than last year then we’ll be going in the right direction. There’s plenty to play for as far as we’re concerned. The players have responded very well.”
Ewan Milne returns to the fold for Highland, while Sean Blair hopes to recover from a knee injury to be included.
Well Highland won this game but it wasn’t pretty.
Grammar were coming strong at the end.
Anyway Highland have a scrum on their own 5m line, the ball is won and Scott Fraser clears the ball off the pitch to end the game.
FULL TIME@ABDNRugby 15-26 @HighlandRFC pic.twitter.com/DdMmo19MJ3— Highland Rugby Club 🦅 (@HighlandRFC) March 25, 2023
Can Orkney make it six in a row?
In National 3, in-form Orkney are now within touching distance of the top five after racking up their fifth successive win.
An impressive 38-17 victory at Perthshire last weekend was the 12th win from 19 games for the newly-promoted islanders.
This Saturday, they are home to eighth-placed Whitecraigs, who they defeated 32-26 in Glasgow on March 4.
Orkney head coach Derek Robb hopes his in-form players can turn on the style to see off their capable weekend opponents.
He said: “It was a fairly close game against Whitecraigs down there, although we had to see out the last 10 minutes with 14 men on the park after a fairly harsh red card.
“Whitecraigs are a useful side and what won us the game down there was our scrum was very solid and put them under a lot of pressure. It’s hard to know what sort of personnel they will have for travelling up.
“We’re in sixth place and going well. We were also deducted a couple of points due to an ineligible player and that prevented us being level with Allan Glen’s.
“We have a lot of confidence right now and we should have the majority of our guys available. We’ve had the same group of 20-24 players that we’ve been able to work with since the turn of the year. That makes a difference in terms of having that continuity. It makes a difference as to how you perform on a Saturday.”
Strong start laid foundations for win
Robb was delighted that his team took the game to their hosts Perthshire from the early stages last week as they nailed their latest win.
He said: “That was the first boat trip we’d had in a while. Sometimes that has an impact in the first 20 minutes of a game, but we got off to a good start and never really looked like losing after that.
“Although Perthshire scored a couple of good tries, we managed to get the bonus (point) sewn up fairly early on and see the game out without too much drama.”
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