Biggar Rugby Club face being denied Premiership place if 2019-2020 season is voided

Although Biggar have romped to Tennent’s National Division 1 with two games to spare, this term’s Scottish club rugby is over due to coronavirus and the ratification of their 2019-2020 title triumph and subsequent promotion to the Premiership is still to be confirmed by representatives of governing body The SRU.

Biggar Rugby Club past president Alistair Stewart told the Carluke and Lanark Gazette that the SRU’s season concluding options included adding two points to all teams’ current totals; sharing points out evenly to all teams; going with the status quo; giving average points scores to teams for outstanding games or simply making it a null and void season.

Alistair said that Biggar would support the first four of these possibilities, which he believed would be decided upon by top brass over the next few days.

Alistair said: “The one that we don’t want, but the one that might be the easiest to put together, is just null and void it altogether.

“It would be a major kick in the stomach for us if that happened.

“Ultimately, given everything else that is going on, it’s small fair, it’s just a game of rugby.

“But yes, it would be a huge disappointment, I don’t think there’s any doubt.

“The boys have worked hard, done exceptionally well, they have almost strolled through the league with one defeat.

“At the minute the Premiership is 10 teams, all the National Leagues are 12 teams.

“In exceptional circumstances why not just put us up to the Premiership with 11 teams. That would be a solution to me.

“Perversely, I think some of the other National 1 clubs might be quite happy to see us go out the road.

“In some respects, if we stay in National 1, that might make a couple of our players think: ‘I wanted a go in the Premiership, I’d like to give it a go’ and might move on.

“There are one or two older guys who would love to get a shot in the Premiership and might think well: ‘If we’re in National 1 I might not bother, I can’t really give that amount of time to do that again’.

“There’s all sorts of permutations, but fingers crossed.

“And I’m led to believe that a lot of other National 1 clubs are of the opinion that they don’t want the season null and voided, they would prefer that there was some decision made.”

We contacted the SRU in a bid to try and establish when it would decide under what conditions to wrap up the 2019-2020 domestic season.

A spokesman told us that it wouldn’t be disclosing any dates for such meetings taking place, but would share information as much as possible when a decision had been made.