West of Scotland RFC fear delay to rugby restart as Covid restrictions tighten

With the traditional national leagues scrapped by Scottish Rugby and replaced by a more regionalised competition, the Milngavie club are in a five-team second-level group with Ardrossan Academicals, Carrick, Greenock Wanderers and Hillhead/Jordanhill,

West are due to kick off against Greenock at Burnbrae on October 31 - but club senior rugby vice-president Ian McDiarmid has real doubts over whether that can happen after the latest tightening of Covid restrictions announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Rugby was hoping to move to the next phase of its route map on October 5, allowing the full contact tackle training necessary to make sure players are ready to return safely.

But Ian said: “I think it’s going to be delayed another three weeks at least.

“Players will have to relearn how to tackle properly. It’s been six months since they made a tackle and it’s important there is a phased approach to this or we’ll just see a huge spike in injuries.

“Just now we can do modified contact, one on one tackle, one on one scrums, lineouts restricted to five in the group. It’s not perfect but we have to abide by the rules.

“I would love to think we will move to the next phase but I just can’t see it with all these additions restrictions.

“For the sake of another three weeks you’re then into the end of November for starting a league season. What’s the point? You may as well wait until January.”

Despite the trials and tribulations of lockdown, Ian says it’s not all doom and gloom around Burnbrae.

He said: “There’s a really positive vibe around the club. Playing numbers are well up right across the board; we’ve got well over 60 senior men, 35 or 36 senior women, 25 girls and the junior numbers are well over 300.”

He continued: “We had the furlough scheme for most of our full-time employees that we could dip into, but we lost a lot of lets towards the end of last season. We rent our 4G pitch a lot to football clubs and other rugby clubs, so that impacted financially on us.

“But we’ve picked up a lot more this season, just because no-one can get pitches because the council ones don’t seem to be open very readily.

“We think the mental health side is going to be the one with long-term issues.

“We’ve worked very hard to be able to have social distancing, but mental health is going to have a big impact this season and it’s something we and the SRU need to look into a bit more.”