Kirkcaldy fall foul of SRU and are kicked out of the Cup

KIRKCALDY have become the latest victims of a Scottish club season decimated by a severe winter after they were eliminated from the Scottish Hydro Cup for failing to fulfil their first match.

The Fifers were due to play a preliminary tie against Boroughmuir on 21 November, 2009, but Kirkcaldy have stated that all efforts to play the game so far have failed due to unplayable pitches which came to a head last week with last-ditch attempts to switch the tie to Meggetland and Murrayfield.

Boroughmuir's former international referee Jim Fleming declared Meggetland playable, but Kirkcaldy's player-coach Quentin Sanft disagreed, and when they informed the SRU the following day that the match had not gone ahead, an offer of Murrayfield's 3G pitch was eventually declined by Kirkcaldy on the grounds that they did not have enough time to bring a squad together.

The SRU's Championship Committee, made up of club representatives, insisted they could wait no longer for the preliminary tie to be played and decided that, "in accordance with competition rules, Kirkcaldy have been eliminated from the competition".

Championship committee chairman, Sheriff David Mackie, said: "While it's the responsibility of the home team to rearrange fixtures and source alternative venues, the Championship Committee made a rare but essential intervention, believing that all games should be played, and arranged the long overdue Scottish Hydro Cup preliminary round tie between Kirkcaldy and Boroughmuir – which should have been played on Saturday, 21 November – to go ahead at Murrayfield on Wednesday, 3 March at 8.15pm.

"Both clubs were made aware that, in accordance with cup regulations, the sanction, if either club failed to provide a team for the match, would be elimination from the competition. Kirkcaldy failed to provide a team for this match and so, in application of the rule 8.1 and 9, have been eliminated from the cup competition by the championship committee on the grounds of a non-fulfilment of the fixture."

Mackie continued: "Boroughmuir will progress to the next round and will face Cartha Queens Park, the already delayed round 1 tie on Tuesday 9 March in order to catch up with the rest of the competition in round 2 the following Saturday (13 March)."

Kirkcaldy, who play in Division Two and are past winners of the Murrayfield Shield final, have the right of appeal within seven days of the decision. Club secretary Derek Harper told The Scotsman: "We are very disappointed. The club has not been trying to avoid the fixture at all, but we just haven't been able to get a date with a playable pitch.

"We are still considering our position with regards to an appeal, but despite the levels of frustration and disappointment within the club at the way the SRU have dealt with this it may be that for the greater good of the cup we have to accept it and move on."

Boroughmuir will now play Cartha Queens Park on Tuesday night, with the second round due next Saturday and the quarter- finals and semi-finals to be completed by 3 April.

Following a fixtures pile-up, Cambuslang and St Boswells were thrown out of the cup last year for similar non-fulfilment, and Howe of Fife had their youth team expelled from a competition the season before.

More than 800 games had to be rearranged last season alone, and efforts to lessen the load this term by scrapping the procedure of clubs knocked out of the cup dropping into lesser competitions have had little impact due to a worse winter.

Yet the mess is essentially of the clubs' own making as it is they, albeit under pressure as revenues have fallen in recent years, who have blocked successive attempts to shorten the club season or alter it in such a way that there is more time freed up to cope with postponements.

The season structure agreed for this year allowed only two stand-by dates up to this point, and although there has been only one week where no games were played – on the Saturday of 9 January – a handful of others from December to March have witnessed very little action as a result of frozen pitches.

The SRU's regulations allow for a cut of cards to decide who progresses from an unplayed cup tie, and Kirkcaldy would have been happier with this – it has been used for some regional games this season – but the SRU committee decided that in this instance Kirkcaldy should have had sufficient time to play the game.

The union's head of community rugby Colin Thomson admitted that it was hugely frustrating to have a club eliminated from a competition for the third season in a row.

"It is very regrettable that a club has had to be eliminated from the competition in this way," he said.

"But the circumstances created by the non-fulfilment of the fixture have forced the championship committee to make a difficult decision and allow the rest of the competition – soon to be in its third round – to continue."

Thomson is currently working with Graham Lowe, the SRU's new director of performance rugby, and with Premier One clubs on proposals for changes to next season.

However, whether clubs will this year react to another fixture mess by shortening the length of the season remains open to question.