There was excitement aplenty back in April at Hive Stadium when Cumnock’s senior men’s team fought back versus Moray to win the National Shield final - and there is still plenty of excitement surrounding the club with 2024-25 underway and a bright future on the cards thanks to the ‘Bred at Broomfield’ mentality.

Any club of Cumnock’s size relies on a strong youth section to survive and thrive and recently Cieron Bell and Jake Shearer, who came through the ranks as youngsters at the Ayrshire outfit, moved onto exciting new chapters in their fledgling careers.

Bell joined Loughborough Lightning’s professional women’s team in the summer having starred for Edinburgh University and Edinburgh Rugby last term and she has been training with Scotland recently.

And Shearer has joined the Glasgow Warriors senior academy in recent weeks after he helped Scotland under-20 win the men’s World Rugby Trophy in the summer via a stint at Ayr/Ayrshire Bulls.

While winger Bell and prop Shearer were perhaps always destined for bigger things, it was the rugby grounding they had at Cumnock that hooked them into the game and, for that, the club can feel rightly proud.

They are just the latest talents to immerge from the Cumnock production line with Mark Bennett - the man who has 29 Scotland caps to his name, won an Olympic Sevens silver medal with GB Sevens in Rio in 2016 and who has been a key man for Glasgow and Edinburgh over the years - heading up the list of famous alumni.

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More recently Jamie Drummond and Ali Rogers have both played for Scotland under-20 and been involved in Super6/Series rugby.

“It is great to see all of these former players doing so well and they inspire everyone who is at the club in their own way,” Cumnock’s head of rugby Stephen Raby said.

“As well as the ones mentioned, Ruairidh Airlie [with Ayr last season] and Alex Apthorpe [with Marr last season] both represented Glasgow and the West in the Inter-District Championship last season and current club youth player Adam Given is a Scottish Rugby academy supported player and recently played for Glasgow and the West under-18s in the regional programme.

“There are a number of products from our youth programme doing well elsewhere, not to mention those who now play seniors for the club itself and, in general, and we are punching well above our weight for a club our size.

“Seeing these players doing so well definitely drives our current youth players on, for example Mark Bennett has been down at training a few times recently and there’s a massive buzz when he’s around.

“Current under-18 player Adam Given is also a big motivator for our under-18s and under-16 and him still playing here just highlights that youth players shouldn’t feel the need to look elsewhere to play.

“For example, in the Shield final in April 20 out of the 22 players in the matchday squad had been developed through our youth programme.

“We call that ‘Bred at Broomfield’ and we’ve done well on the youth development side in recent years and want to continue to do so.

“Last season’s National Shield win was an unbelievable achievement for everyone at the club [in the final they were 27-5 down and then 32-19 down before battling back to triumph 34-32 over Moray] while we also won the boys’ West B Schools Conference, so things are certainly heading in the right direction.”

To play games regularly at the West B Schools Conference level for boys, Cumnock have teamed up with local school Robert Burns Academy to make sure there is regular access to the sport for all and this is working well and is creating a pathway into the senior first team.

And, excitingly, the girls’ section at the club is growing apace and now offers rugby all the way up from under-12s after the girls come out of the Minis through to the relatively new senior women’s team.

Neil Given, the youth section lead and one of the drivers behind girls rugby at the club, said: “Women’s and girls rugby is growing very quickly across Scotland and we are pleased to now be able to offer much more to girls as they grow up playing at Cumnock.

“Like all of these things, it takes time because a lot of girls are coming into things from a background of little or no rugby at all, but our band of coaches aim to make the training sessions fun and it is great to see the potential there is at the club in terms of girls rugby.

“The boys youth set-up continues to go well and hopefully these guys see last year’s senior side win the Shield and think ‘I want that to be me one day in a Cumnock strip’.”

Scott Given, Neil’s brother, is the club president and he added: “We are really, really pushing to try and develop local youth at the club and the structures we now have in place across the board headed up by Stephen and with the hard work of Neil and others put us in a pretty good place.

“We have got a blueprint in place now which allows players locally to come to us and play from primary one to senior level at the club and that is for males and females so I am looking forward to seeing that continue to grow during 2024-25.

“After Minis for the boys there are under-13, 14, 15, 16 and 18 teams before senior level and for girls before they make it to the Cumnock women’s team there are opportunities at under-12, 14, 16 an 18 levels so there is a really nice pathway for those that want it.

“The Shield win last year shone the spotlight on the club a wee bit more in the local area and hopefully we can use that and things like the news about Cieron and Jake to keep things growing - that’s the plan.”

Cumnock’s senior men’s team lost their Arnold Clark West One opener at home versus Kilmarnock 57-19 on Saturday, August 24 and were then just edged out 27-26 by Oban Lorne on Saturday just gone, but did pick up their first bonus point of the campaign.