Next week Rangers football club faces the might of St Petersburg in the Uefa Cup final. Yesterday the field of play was a literary one, as pupils from St Petersburg met their Scottish counterparts to compete in a national competition for written work in the schools of both countries.

The result: an honourable draw. Everyone agreed that the Russian pupils showed remarkable maturity, particularly as they had translated their poems and short stories from Russian into English. But the Scots showed greater imagination - and a strong sense of humour that won plaudits from the judges.

The Pushkin Prizes, established in memory of the 19th-century Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, have drawn entries from Russia and Scotland for 19 years. Pupils aged 12 to 14 are required to write stories that express their feelings, pay tribute to great writers, or simply tell a good tale.

The prize is a collection of books and a week at the literary centre of Moniack Mhor in Inverness-shire, where they receive coaching in the art of good writing.

Yesterday the first prize for Scottish work went to Maddi Douglas, of Peebles High School. Daria Baranova and Olga Glioza from School 316 and School 157, St Petersburg, were given a joint first prize.The contrast in their styles was almost as stark as that between the flowing football of Zenit St Petersburg and the stalwart defence of Rangers FC. While Daria and Olga told elegiac stories, set in the landscape of a Russian winter, Maddi's was a tale of revenge, as a girl who does a dagger-throwing act takes public revenge on her errant husband by hurling her final knife at his heart: “I saw the sharp edge tear through his flesh as easily as he had torn through our marriage ...”

One of the judges, the poet Stewart Conn, said that he was impressed by the way that the Russians were taught: they learnt English from the age of 6 and recited great reams of Russian poetry, particularly by Pushkin.