Matthew Hicks embodies the struggle that Royal High Rugby Club are enduring ahead of one of the biggest decisions in their storied history.
As president of the team from the Barnton suburb of Edinburgh, Hicks is part of a small but hard-working committee striving diligently to recruit and retain sufficient players to allow Royal High to continue to field a team in the league next season. A final call on that is expected next week.
Hicks, though, also understands the dilemma facing many players when it comes to meeting the commitment required even for amateur club rugby.
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The back-rower elected to retire last year, years of injuries, a busy career in financial services and a young family combining to help him alight at that difficult decision.
It is a problem not unique to Royal High, with many other clubs struggling to find suitable numbers who can train two evenings a week then make themselves available for a match on a Saturday.
“We’ve found increasingly over the last few years that we’ve been struggling to put a team out,” reveals Hicks. “There would often be a lot of Friday night phone calls as we tried to get sufficient numbers. We would end up hoping to get at least 19 players and then it got down to maybe 16 or even just 15 so we could fulfil the fixture.
“So, it’s about what we have to do to enhance that core group who are the mainstay of every club, 10 to 15 people who can train twice a week, every week, and then maybe add some peripheral players on top of that.
“I’m 40 now and played right up until last year. For most of my playing days you were expected at training twice a week and even missing one match was frowned upon. Now rugby isn’t at the forefront of many players’ plans. Some just lose the hunger for it so you lose them. Others have work or a young family or other things that take up a lot of their time, especially the older they get.
“I’ve been in that boat myself. I’ve had shoulder surgery and broke both legs over the years. I dislocated my ankle and broke my leg when I was 36 and, with two young kids, it takes its toll.
“So I understand the dilemma older players have. But hopefully we can grow that cohort of 18 to 27 year olds who probably don’t have a family yet and are still invested in wanting to play rugby every week.
“We’ve got quite a few in the 30 to 35 age bracket and we’ve got some we’ve pulled through from the high school aged 18 to around 23. But it’s just keeping them all that’s the problem.”
Royal High, established in 1868 and one of the founder members of the Scottish Rugby Union, find themselves caught in the horns of another dilemma.
With no 2nd XV they have found players who just want to play casual rugby drifting away. But to field another team would require finding an additional 40 bodies at a time when it is already tough enough to field a first team.
“We also have a slight issue in that we have a first team and that’s it,” adds Hicks.
“You get social players who just want to turn up and play maybe every home game or every twice a month. But we don’t have an outlet for them.
“Sometimes they just leave us and find another team where they can just pop in and pop out without committing. Whereas if they come to us they could be starting in the first team in their first week.
"So it’s either league rugby or nothing with us and some players just drift away because of that. Some don’t even go to another club, they just stop playing altogether. And that’s an even bigger worry for Scottish rugby as a whole moving forward.”
Royal High made their plight public recently when they asked for external parties to come on board to help the committee in the player recruitment search. Those social media posts have helped generate interest, and Hicks hopes that, in turn, will generate tangible results. With Scottish Rugby, though, requiring clubs to register soon for next season, time is running out.
“There’s been a lot of positivity since we put out that statement,” reveals Hicks.
“We’ve had players reaching out to us, a few even from Walkerburn [the closure-threatened Borders club] who said they were based in Edinburgh and could be available. So that’s promising. We’re just hoping we can get a few more to join them.
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“But we’re looking at different options. Do we move to become a social team? But then you lose your better players as they’ll want to play competitive rugby.
"We’ve got a really successful Rhinos unit that has 100-plus kids training every week so maybe we can get some of the dads to start with touch rugby and then draw them in from that. So there are a few avenues that we’re looking at.
“We’ve got access to great facilities in partnership with the athletics club, great changing facilities, a gym, a good pitch and a brilliant clubhouse. Fiscally, we’re doing well too. We’ve got good sponsors and enough people paying memberships so it’s all set up nicely. We just need to find more players.
“East [Region League Division] 2 might be a good place for us as we’ll be competitive again. Or we might go down the social route with one or two games a month against clubs in a similar position. There’s a lot to think about. We’ll reconvene as a committee early next week and see which route we decide to go down.”
Anyone wishing to offer support and assistance should email the club secretary on secretaryrugby@royalhighrugby.com
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