Southern Knights warned they’ll have to be at their best to have any hope of first away win against Ayrshire Bulls for over four years

That trip west to Alloway, near Ayr, is Knights’ fourth fixture of their current and final campaign – following losses to Edinburgh A by 54-19 last month and Watsonians by 24-14 this month and a 34-17 win against Boroughmuir Bears in April, all at home at Melrose’s Greenyards – and it kicks off at 3pm.

They go into it sitting fifth in the table tied on five points with fourth-placed Stirling Wolves and sixth-placed Boroughmuir Bears, ten points and four places worse off than their hosts at Millbrae.

Looking ahead to going up against Bulls, unbeaten since losing out by 29-19 to Stirling in last year’s Fosroc Super Series Championship play-off final in Edinburgh in November, Wight said: “In terms of Super6, they’ve always been at or near the top. They get so many things right.

“We fully appreciate how tough it’s going to be.

“Obviously they’re undefeated so it’ll be really difficult.

“We’re going to have to look at a few different things.

“We’ve been looking at ourselves pretty hard on the back of Saturday against Watsonians.

“When you go over to Ayrshire Bulls, you can’t afford to make many – well, any – mistakes.

“We know we’ve got to perform to the best of our ability to have any chance of winning.

“They’ve got a huge amount of firepower, they’re good up front and they’ve got backs that can play a good brand of rugby, but predominantly they’re driven by their set-piece. They’re really efficient at what they do in terms of lineouts and scrums.

“Pat MacArthur has built up a great group of players around him and they get so much right.

“They’re a well-supported club and they always perform well at home. It’s very rare that they have an off week at home.

“We know it’s going to be difficult and we know we’ve got to go over there and fully front up.

“If we can get parity up front, hopefully we’ll have a chance.”

Knights are looking to learn from the mistakes that gifted head-starts of 21-0 to Watsonians and Edinburgh and 10-0 to Boroughmuir in their three games to date and having a weekend off will help them tackle that, reckons Wight.

“We didn’t start at all well against Watsonians,” he admitted. “The first four times we had opportunities with the ball, we made mistakes.

“We’ve looked at that and we’ve spoken about it in detail.

“Having a weekend off has probably come at quite a good time for us as we physically took a bit of a battering in week one against Edinburgh A, then we hit a bit of a high against Boroughmuir, then we just didn’t perform at all against Watsonians.

“The break’s good as we can really look at ourselves and will have fitted in four sessions before we go to Ayr so we can nail a game-plan to take there and hopefully we can execute it on the day.”

Knights last won at Millbrae in January 2020, by 29-20 in what was then the Super6, with Rob Chrystie as head coach, thanks to tries from Neil Irvine-Hess, Conor Young and Ciaran Whyte.

They’ve only beaten them once since, by 22-20 at home in August 2021 in the championship, also with Chrystie in charge, their tries that day being scored by Nyle Godsmark and Jacob Henry.

Their other seven meetings in the interim yielded losses by 28-0 away in October and 38-24 at home in August in the championship, 45-24 at home in the sprint series in April 2023, 31-5 away in a championship double-header in September 2022, 62-12 at home in the sprint in May of that year, 17-11 away in the championship in October 2021 and 26-16 later that month in that year’s play-off final in Edinburgh.

Knights’ next game after their trip to the west coast is away to Edinburgh’s Heriot’s on Saturday, May 25, also at 3pm, and that’s followed by a visit from Stirling on Friday, May 31, with kick-off at 7.45pm, concluding their regular season ahead of June’s play-offs.

The Borderers’ last game against Heriot’s was a 21-21 championship draw at home in November, preceded by a 38-34 defeat in the capital in September.

Their last meeting with Stirling yielded a 43-20 loss, also in the championship, at the end of October, following a 27-19 victory at home at the start of September.

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