Essential funds

Published on 18/10/2012 00:00

As A past captain and later president of Edinburgh Accies (EA), let me assure James Simpson (Letters, 13 October) that participation in the top flight of rugby is no longer viable on an entirely amateur basis, hence the need for some degree of commercial underpinning of our club’s operation through the fairly modest (as compared with nearby Waitrose) provision of five small shopping outlets to generate some essential income.

I can also assure Mr Simpson that the alternative of the sale of the field for housing is far from “silly scaremongering”, as that is precisely what was being 
initiated by the EA Club in 1991, and was only narrowly averted by an emergency fundraising campaign that managed to raise the £150,000 needed to make major essential repairs to the then pavilion.

However, the scale of today’s problem is much more serious, hence the current proposals.

Ronnie Sloan

Lomond Road

Edinburgh