Different game

Published on 20/10/2012 00:00

Let me assure Ronnie Sloan (Letters, 18 October) that we all wish the Accies Rugby Club well. We have simply suggested that their philanthropic donors, instead of putting £8 million into large and utterly inappropriate commercial development on the playing fields at Raeburn Place, might put £4m or £5m into an endowment fund to support the club, and the remaining £3m to £4m into facilities for rugby and other sports.

If the club insists that commercial development on the scale proposed is the only solution for the Accies, then Raeburn Place can no longer
accommodate them and, like Bath Rugby Club, they should leave and find a ground which suits their ambitions elsewhere.

While they will be missed, the playing fields will survive without them. It is interesting to know that the Accies considered selling the ground in 1991. It is common knowledge that the club has been in trouble for a long time. If the suggestion that the Raeburn Place playing fields could be developed for housing is not “silly scaremongering”, it is naïve.

James Simpson OBE FRIAS

Simpson & Brown Architects

St Ninian’s Manse

Edinburgh