Shetland
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It is also hard for some players to be away from their
families.
“I have been Club Secretary for the last three years
and this has been a rewarding role, seeing how the
Club has moved forward and grown in that time. There
is much more of a family feel within the Club with
parents encouraged to help out and take part in events,
fundraising and coaching.
“There is a great vibe in the Club just now. We
hosted part of the Caledonia North Roadshow with
representatives from the SRU visiting the Club to see
how we have been able to progress and grow over the
last few years.
“Last season has been really good for the Club with
the Senior Men’s Team coming 2nd in the Tennents
Caledonia North 3 after a period of threatened relegation.
This is largely due to a new forward-thinking Team
Captain, Jake Watt, two dedicated coaches and great
numbers at training sessions. As I mentioned earlier the
Senior Ladies Team have won the BT Tennents North
League for the 2nd time in three years, with a nail biting
league deciding game away to Orkney, our Island
neighbours and rivals.
“Our Team Captain, Katie Roe, was nominated and
won the Women’s North League Player of the Year. We
have also seen the number of junior players grow over
the last year. With over 100 children from pre-school to
U18 taking part in training sessions.
“The plan for 2019 is for the ladies to win the league
again. We hope to bring on plans to build a home for
Shetland Rugby with a Club House while continuing
to build on the numbers of junior members coming to
training.
“Youth rugby is very important to the Club. They
are the future senior players. On Saturday morning we
have from Pre-school and primary age children training.
Secondary age players train through the week and on
Sunday. This season Jake ran training sessions for sixth
year pupils at the local high school, this resulted in three
players being selected to play for the Senior Men’s Team
20 Issue 87
in fixtures. We are lucky enough to have use of an indoor
4g pitch for the winter months as Shetland weather
can be wild, and we may need to tie down some of the
smaller junior players in case they blow away!
“There hasn’t always been a smooth transition from
junior to senior players as a lot of players go away to the
Scottish mainland for college and university after they
finish school. A number of these players join the college
or uni team whilst they are away and if they come back
to Shetland they do usually play for the Club.
“The Club is heavily involved with the Shetland
community. Being a small, close-knit place it’s hard not to
be. We are heavily involved with local schools, through
Active Schools, running coaching sessions for primary
and secondary ages. This can sometimes encourage
players to come along to other training sessions. We
provide marshal services for the annual Folk Festival
and other music shows. We also do a lot of fundraising
where the community get to take part. We are hoping to
run our own “Tough Mudder” type event which will be
open to all.
“The biggest challenges facing the Club is not having
a proper home, with no Club House. We have used the
local sports centre and the British Legion for after games.
This also means that we have extra costs for having to
hire these venues when we could be making money
ourselves if we had a Club House.
“Another challenge is recruiting and retaining
players, at all ages. The predominate sport in Shetland
has always been football. However, we have seen that
some junior teams are changing their training times to fit
in with rugby because players are doing both.
“Our ambitions for the next five years are to continue
to grow, with hopefully a 2nd XV in both senior teams,
and some of the junior teams entered into a league or
certainly getting more opportunity to play games. We
also hope to have a clear development plan which sets
down all our goals, which include a Club House.”