THE Scottish Rugby Union is facing a furious backlash from two clubs who have been thrown out of this year's Scottish Hydro-Electric Cup as a means of reducing the fixture backlog, caused by recent bad weather, which threatens to swamp the last few months of the season.
On Tuesday night, Cumbernauld and St Boswells rugby clubs were informed that because they had not managed to fulfil their third-round matches against East Kilbride and Linlithgow, respectively – which had originally been scheduled for Saturday 20
December – the SRU's championship committee had decided that the teams with the higher league placing in each of those games should be given a bye into Saturday's fourth-round matches, while the lower-ranked team would be ejected into the third-tier bowl competition.
St Boswells have already lodged a complaint against this decision and club secretary Scott Elliot says that they will refuse to play in Saturday's Bowl match against Lismore in protest.
"The first we heard of what was happening was on Tuesday night when we got a phone call out of the blue from Barbara Gillie (SRU competitions co-ordinator] telling us that there had been a meeting of the championship committee and they had decided that we must play our game against Linlithgow by Friday night or we would be chucked out the cup. There is no way we could organise the game in that tight timescale. It isn't feasible; our guys work and so do the Linlithgow boys," he said.
"I don't understand what's wrong with us playing our third round match this Saturday, our fourth-round match the week after, and pushing the league schedule back a week."
Meanwhile, Jim McLaren, director of rugby at Cumbernauld, said that his club were seeking legal advice.
"My understanding is that the championship rules give us seven days to appeal and if the SRU go ahead with the fixtures before then, then that is their problem. That's where other courses of action might come in," he said. "I have informed the SRU that we have no intention of playing in the Bowl this weekend, because if we do fulfil the fixture that would suggest that we are accepting their decision,"
Inevitably, the SRU are going to come in for heavy criticism over this fiasco, but the problem is not entirely of their own making. While there may be some merit in the argument that this problem has been brewing for weeks and that they have been slow in reacting, the whole situation stems from the fact that there are simply not enough weeks in the season at the moment to accommodate all scheduled and rescheduled league and cup matches, plus dormant weekends on most international Saturdays and the traditional end of season Borders Sevens circuit.
An SRU statement, issued last night, stated: "The decision taken by the elected representatives was a difficult call to make but one which has been taken with the best interest of all of Scottish club rugby in mind."
