There was a special guest at Wardie on Saturday when ex-Captain Jake Harris made the short trip from his Trinity Lodge Nursing Home residence for the fixture against Ross High.

Harris, who Captained the Club back in 1948, enjoyed the atmosphere and the opportunity to meet with some of his old playing chums including George McKinnes, who at 79, is 4 years younger than Jake!

Despite now being blind, Jake enjoyed the match through commentary from Club President Mark Brown and Trinity Lodge's Hugh Munro.

In the Clubhouse afterwards, Harris, who played Centre for the Club who were also a strong 7's side at the time winning the Haddington tournament in his year of Captaincy, presented the Broughton Man of the Match award somewhat ironically to current Club Captain Johnny Wells.

On the pitch, a strong Ross High side took advantage of some generous Broughton defending early on to take a 0-10 lead which Broughton never recovered from.

Despite a 36th minute Urqhuart try - converted by Matthews, Broughton failed to really get into the game and went down 07-22 which puts a dent into their Title campaign.

The game started with Broughton playing down the Wardie slope and it was Ross High who looked the hungrier of the two sides and their forwards and back complimented each other well in bursts of play.

However, the first scoring chance came to the home side after the ball was ripped from a Ross High maul and McFarlane set on a long journey towards the visitors line.  Uphill, and with some 40 metres to go, the 21 year old decided it best to bring into play one of the runners in the team however his pass to Lightning Lenihan was adjudged forward by the match official from Dalkeith.

Lenihan had to call upon his pace to save a certain try as the match completed it's first quarter.  A stray pass in midfield was intercepted by a Ross High player who was off a la Forrest Gump mode however the Irishman raced back to make an important challenge.

The Tranent Men were desperate to breach the Broughton line and they got their wish shortly after.

With Broughton forcing the issue at the Ross High red-zone, the home side lost possession in a rolling maul against a Ross High side who had the spies out watching how the Broughton pack played their game against Dunbar recently.  The ball was kicked through and Arrandale kicked his clearance into touch at the 22.

Form the resultant line out, a strong rolling maul brought the tourists to within 5 metres of the Broughton try line.  A further push towards the line resulted in the ball being held up over the line however from the scrum, the ball was shipped out to the right wing for the winger to go in at the corner.  0-5.

Broughton's clever restart saw Matthews change direction causing a knock on by a Ross High forward.  Quick distribution from Arrandale at the base of the scrum saw the ball go from Matthews to Harper, unfortunately he misjudged Henderson's lack of height and his orbital pass was too high for the wee man to get hold of!

On the half hour Harper over-cooked his clearance from outside the safe haven of his 22 allowing a Ross High line out closer to his own line than expected.  The forwards took no time to get the ball out to their back line and after some rucking and mauling, the No6 came up with the ball and made it to the line for a score.  0-10.

Worse was to follow a few minutes later when Harper called the mark in the 22 and popped the ball back to Matthews to clear.  The normally surefooted former Currie man pulled his kick back in field instead of finding touch inviting the Ross High backs to have a run.

Run they did and a succession of missed tackles and neat visiting play caused all sorts of problems for the home defence and from recycled ball, the Ross High No.8 went over for the third unanswered try of the day.  The conversion this time was good putting the visitors 0-17 ahead.

With time running out to stop the rot and get back into the game, Broughton were awarded a penalty for an infringement and from the line out the Broughton pack got to within a metre of the line before surrendering possession.  The kick clear went down the throat of Henderson and as he gathered pace, he passed his colleague Urqhuart making his way back towards the action.  The Kiwi turned around calling for the ball and received it with Henderson running back outside to presumably await the return pass.  Nope.  Urqhuart fended off the close attentions of a Ross High player and he saw the gap and went for it.  A try for Broughton!  With the big fella making it under the posts, it gave Matthews the easiest of chances to slot the extras.  07-17 at half time and Broughton were still in it.

Broughton had the better of the early second half exchanges but failed to turn chances into points and almost went further behind when Ross High's Stand-Off had a pop at the posts from an ambitious range.  His half-way line attempt was short and hit the base of the post.  McFarlane went on a run out of his danger zone and from the ruck there was an infringement and this allowed Matthews to take his side out of trouble up to the half-way line.

Matthews received the ball from the line-out and he tried to reverse the play back up the blind side, putting in Beaton to have a go at the visitor's resilient defence.  The comeback kid who has been plagued by injury all season, passed to Mohammed but the hooker was banjoed in contact and the ball was lost.  That was to be his last action of the game, being replaced by Polish powerhouse Wolniak.

A Broughton line out just after the hour mark offered a prime opportunity to set up a try-scoring chance.  Unfortunately the ball popped up from the maul like a bar of soap in a ladies hockey shower-room and the ball was cleared to the Ross High 10 metre line.

The final nail in the Broughton coffin came with 10 minutes to go when Broughton lost the ball in open play and with a try looking a certainty in the corner, a combination of Pannell and Henderson managed to bundle the winger into touch.

The line out was lost and with the Ross High backs on fire, they got into an overlap situation and the resulted in a try in the bottom corner, despite remonstrations from the home side that the ball was lost in the tackle and squirted out instead of their being full downward control.  Post-match the Referee confirmed that the score was awarded under the contentious 'benefit of the doubt' ruling in favour of the attacker and in light of no MTO at Wardie, the try was awarded.  Perhaps something to bring up at the next Committee Meeting......!!

Fragne was sin-binned with 4 minutes left on the clock for handbags at dawn and this pretty much summed up the Broughton afternoon.

Full time 07-22.