Allan Glen’s and Lenzie resigned to full season without competitive rugby

Scottish Rugby last week announced that the current season was to be scrapped completely due to covid-19 restrictions.

The traditional league schedule had already been axed and replaced by a more localised structure, and it was hoped games would resume in January, but that too has now been ditched, with any rugby played between now and spring, at the earliest, restricted to friendly matches.

Allan Glen’s president Paul Reilly admitted the news hadn’t really come as a surprise.

He said: “I’m not too upset about it if I’m being honest because we were expecting it, given the levels of the virus and the fact that we’re in winter.

“The biggest disappointment was earlier on in the season when they said we weren’t going to have normal league rugby.

“We got over that and thought there was going to be this mini-league. We weren’t over the moon about that because we didn’t have our local rivals Lenzie in the same pool as us, which would make sense, to give it a bit of local interest, but they paired us with Oban, which wasn’t very local, and also some other teams in the Glasgow second division which, to be honest, wouldn’t have given us much of a challenge.

“We were going to try and augment that by getting some decent-quality friendlies and that will be our tack going forward, including Lenzie and maybe West of Scotland, Hillhead/Jordanhill and Glasgow High School, and try and improve our game by playing quality opposition.”

His views were echoed by his Lenzie counterpart Graham Wilson, who admitted: “I don’t think anyone is surprised in the circumstances.

“I think it was optimistic of the SRU to try and say we would resume rugby in January when it was still very uncertain.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed because we want to be playing and to get the guys together socialising and enjoying the rugby, but we just have to be realistic and manage expectations.

“It’s a global pandemic and we’ve got to manage our way through it.”

“Our players have been training in accordance with the SRU guidelines thanks to our covid co-ordinator in his role keeping on top of everything.

“The guys have been keeping fit and they are desperate to play, so if we’re allowed to get friendlies, we’d be very interested and we have already spoken with Glen’s about it.”