All change with Craigs

The West Lodge club has this week announced the appointment of Jim Barrie as head coach, who takes over from Jim Henderson following his period of interim control after the departure of John Shaw midway through last season.

The former Kilmarnock centre brings a wealth of coaching experience to the role and is already excited by the challenge ahead.

He said: “I will be looking for the boys to take on board their experiences from last season to make a real effort to get promotion out of what will be a tough league.

“For the last few years they have always been the new boys in the league and perhaps sprung a few surprises, but this time they are coming back down and teams will be going for them.”

Barrie started his coaching career with Glasgow under-20s before moving on to Ayr as backs coach for two season.

A further two seasons at Glasgow Hawks followed before six years as head coach at Ardrossan when he guided the Ayrshire team to Premier Three.

Most recently, Barrie has spent two and a half seasons with Cambuslang where they narrowly missed out on promotion Part of the set-up at Cambuslang was Kenny Glen, a specialist scrummaging coach, who has been brought on board to work with the Whitecraigs forwards next season.

Current player-caoch Stewart Magorian will be the third member of the coaching team.

Pre-season training will start on July 10.