Today, I want to talk to you about something that I feel real passionate about, I am fairly opinionated about and is increasing becoming an issue nationwide. Its supporting our grass roots rugby teams.

I would be the first to say, it’s a good idea to fly the coup and get out there. I have been incredibly lucky in the opportunities I have had to travel and play rugby overseas, from the baking heat of Malta, where we trained on clay pitches and played on surface which resembled concrete. To the deep south of New Zealand where it’s almost as cold and miserable as January fixture in Ross-Shire. But, I felt like it was time to come home for a bit and play for the mighty Ross Stags again.
Now, this is where we are seeing problems. Is Ross-Sutherland in the premiership? No. Does it have the best facilities in the district? No (but not far off it). Is it the biggest club? no. Would I play for another club in the area? Absolutely not!!

Ross-Sutherland is a second home to me, I started playing in the red and blue top when I was seven, back then I was as round as I was tall. I loved every second of it growing up, meeting all my mates on a Saturday morning, most of which I am still good mates with today, struggling through the early morning starts to travel all over the country for fixtures, developing into a young man where our coaches where always there for us and parted their wisdom on life. I remember being asked to play my first senior fixture against HMS Sutherland nine years ago, or even going to my first end of season players dinner and making a fool of myself after a few too many shandys…

But now I am home again and playing in the first XV again. What’s different though, I realise it takes a hell of a lot of work behind the scenes to keep a club up and running. This season I have been coaching the seniors (as a volunteer, separate from my job) the time commitment players see is what I do on the paddock with them, what they don’t see is the hours on the phone organising and planning, training, games, catering, travel, cleaning, pitch maintenance and the list goes on and on…

Nobody can do this on their own and this is where the club culture at the grass root level is struggling. Many players pay their subs and expect everything to be done for them, if you play for Melrose, that’s okay. If you play for a regional team it’s just not! In my ideal world, every player should give something back to the club, whether that be helping with club maintenance, helping with junior coaching, helping with club funding, club projects but the key word there is help! Only when you have that kind of buy in from a senior team, you will get full backing from the club, junior players asking to be ball boys for home games, club members travelling to support at away games and people buying the lads a pint after a hard game to say well done for what they do on and off the pitch.

While that sounds poetically just, I don’t know many clubs where it happens. I can point it to a handful of reasons. First, club loyalty… It used to be only the big cities, players would jump from club to club every other season. This means when it came time to hanging the boots up, they don’t have that connection to one club so don’t give any time back. But now, even in the countryside, folk will now travel that extra 30 minutes to training at the slightest prospect of playing better rugby. This must stop!!!!! Why do you think clubs are split up into regions and districts? If you live here, then you play for this club. End of story, no ifs ands or buts! This is becoming all the more apparent in the youth section of the game, players believing if they play for another team they have a better chance to go pro. This is a toxic mind set for a younger player, if they have the potential to go all the way, then realistically they have to be playing rugby in the public school set up, or go to a good rugby university.

Don’t take this as an insult to the standard of club rugby but if you look at capped international players of the past two decades you will see a recurring theme in their education. Even looking at age grade teams they are peppered with boys from fee paying schools. Therefore, if players commit to their home club and we stop this club hopping, we will improve the standard and participating of grass root clubs and at the end of the day, more clubs means more rugby.

That doesn’t mean we will not support emerging talent. We will always do our best develop players to their full potential and if we’ve taken them as far as we can and they need to move on to another club to get more games against a higher level of opposition then they go with our best wishes.

Second, people are too selfish with their time! If I think back to my days of playing age grade rugby, we always had two or three coaches. They were all parents who were giving up their time so we could play. I now see several age groups in most clubs with a severe lack of coaches. If ex-players or parents of youth players don’t get involved in volunteering, there will be no more rugby. I hear on a regular basis “I’m too busy” or “I don’t know enough about the game”. In my experience, very few people are too busy to help. If I asked you, how many hours of TV do you watch a week? How many hours do you spend on your phone or the social medias? Or even how many people complain there isn’t a lot to do here? When you look at it like that, I’m sure more people could help. The second question, “I don’t know a lot about rugby” … That is why Scottish Rugby has development officers, we are not just here to coach players but to coach coaches! Looking forward, I will be running monthly coaching workshops at the Ross-Sutherland and these will run alongside the Scottish rugby workshops delivered by other coaches. So, plenty of opportunities to learn. Last thing on this point, clubs don’t just need coaches, they need volunteers to do the more thankless jobs behind the scenes. In my experience these are the people who keep clubs running and nine times out of ten, it is a small group of people with really could do with sharing the work load.

In Summary, I feel my club Ross-Sutherland is in a good place just now. Strong youth section, best group of volunteers I have ever seen and a real buzz about the club when you are there. What we need to go forward is; more parents putting their hands up to coach, players of all ages to respect that where they live does determine which club they play for and that in my opinion there is no debate on! And people need to understand that a rugby club is more than a group of people throwing a ball about, it should be a second home. I can honestly say as long as I live in Easter Ross I will be a Ross-Sutherland man, I will wear the red and blue every chance I get, I will happily help out anyway I can off the pitch and when it comes to hanging the boots up, I will give back anyway I can because without the volunteers I was surrounded with growing up, I would not be the fine man I am today and I probably wouldn’t even be in the career I am in now! Special mention to Rob Parkes and Alan MacT

So, thank you to anyone who has been involved in the club over the years and here is to the continued grow of our club!

Cheers, John Mann Community & Rugby Development Officer