Club Rugby

The SRU has appointed Grand Slam hero Sean Lineen as the figurehead for its Super 6 strategy for the Scottish club game.

Scotland’s Super Six franchise clubs will face the top six in the Welsh Principality Premiership as part of a new cross-border competition.

Response to this week’s news about the SRU’s “Super 6” must surely be “we’ll have to wait and see”. No doubt the members of the panel, chaired by Sir Bill Gammell, who had the task of assessing the twelve bidding clubs, and selecting the Six that will set sail on the uncharted ocean of officially approved semi-pro rugby, will have adhered scrupulously to the criteria they were handed. Nevertheless, it seems wrong – even ridiculous – that three of the “chosen six” are Edinburgh clubs, that there is no Glasgow one, and that Stirling County is the most northerly club selected. For years we have bewailed the narrow base of Scottish rugby. Now Ayr is to be the only Super 6 club more than a drive and a chip from Murrayfield. This is a weird way to grow the game.

The president of Currie Chieftains has described the decision by the SRU to have three Edinburgh clubs in the Super 6 as “unfathomable”.

SRU chief executive Mark Dodson believes there will be a “clamour” to join what he is convinced will be a successful Super 6 when it gets up and running the season after next.

The Scottish Rugby Union ignored its own compliance guidelines when it awarded three of its Super 6 franchises to clubs in Edinburgh, The Scotsman has learned.

The winning bids may now be known but lots of questions remain over what impact, positive or negative, the watershed creation of the Super 6 will have on the landscape of Scottish rugby.

This was always a project driven as much by fear of being left behind as it was by any ambition of the clubs to narrow the gap to the professional teams who are, in any comparison, over the hill and half way across the next county.

THE SRU has announced the six franchises who will compete in its new Super 6 competition when it starts in 2019/20.

The players of Stirling County
are embracing the opportunity to attain legendary 
status by becoming only the second team in the club’s 
history to win a piece of major silverware as they look to upset the odds in today’s 
BT Cup final against hot favourites Melrose.

Watsonians made it two from two on successive Saturdays by winning the Hawick Sevens yesterday, a week after they triumphed at Melrose. They defeated Heriot’s in the final at Mansfield Park, extending their lead in the Kings of the Sevens competition in the process.

Melrose were crowned BT Premiership champions after a hard-earned but well-crafted victory in the play-off final that keeps them on track for the league and cup double.

Melrose finished off a near-perfect Premiership season with a scrappy, hard-earned victory over defending champions Ayr in the play-off final.

The SRU has received 12 applications from clubs to form franchises in the new part-time professional Super 6 league which is due to launch in the 2019/20 season.

Scotland hooker Ross Ford will make his return to action after five months out when he plays for Melrose in the BT Cup semi-final against Watsonians at Myreside tomorrow.

The deadline for applications for a Super Six franchise is fast approaching, Saturday 31 March, one day ahead of April Fool’s, is the cut-off point. Scottish Rugby recently stated that as many as 13 separate entities had given notes of interest although not all of them will throw their hat into the ring. The winners will be announced one month later, on 1 May.

Ayr will not give up their title easily. There were times earlier in the season when even a place in the play-offs was in jeopardy, and times in this Premiership semi-final when they were just clinging on. But they got there in the end, and travel to the Greenyards for the final in two weeks with their morale as high as it has been since the memorable day last spring when they were crowned champions at that very venue.

For a second successive season Melrose will contest the final of the Premiership play-offs after reaching the last stage of the competition with a sizeable win over Watsonians at the Greenyards.

Boroughmuir live to fight another season in the BT Premiership after securing a bonus-point win over Glasgow Hawks.