Glasgow Hawks RFC vs Selkirk RFC

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Old Anniesland


Welcome

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you all to Old Anniesland for our first home game of the 2008-2009 season. A new season is always exciting for players, coaches and supporters and although we didn’t have the best of days at West of Scotland last weekend, I know that Peter Wright, David Wilson and players are all looking forward to a hard but exciting and open game of rugby against newly promoted Selkirk.


I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Selkirk on what has been a pretty impressive six months from March to September. During this period Selkirk has secured promotion to Premier One, retained their Radio Borders 'King of the Sevens' title, won the Border League for the first time in 55 years, won their own 7s tournament beating Newcastle Falcons in the final and secured a comeback victory last Saturday at Philiphaugh in their first game back in Premier One against Currie!


This demonstrates that their club is in good health and I would like to extend a warm welcome to President George Thomson, Senior Vice-President Donald Macleod and all the Selkirk supporters to Old Anniesland this Afternoon.


As a result of his club’s promotion to Premier One, George and I are now colleagues on the Premier One Forum. The P1 Forum is made up, naturally, of representatives of all the clubs in Premier One and meets monthly to discuss how to improve Scottish club rugby and in particular Premier One club rugby.


It has been reported in the press that Glasgow Hawks has presented a paper to the SRU outlining how we believe Premier One could close the ever-widening gap between the largely amateur community game and the professional game in Scotland. This is true and it would be fair to say that our proposal received a mixed response, but the encouraging outcome from my perspective was that many of the P1 clubs realised that a new vision for club rugby should sought.


Professional player allocation

This season in Scottish rugby, all 77 professionally contracted players have been allocated to the 12 Premier One clubs. The distribution of the professional players was based on the American draft system and the seven players Hawks have selected are Graeme Morrison, Max Evans, Steve Swindall, Colin Shaw, Michael Adamson, Thom Evans (all Glasgow Warriors) and Steven Turnbull (Edinburgh Rugby).


Most of you will be familiar with the first five names but the last two are new to Hawks and have been chosen for reasons that won’t fit into this programme, but we are delighted that they are part of the Hawks stable this season and we may even see one or two of them in a Hawks jersey from time to time.


Youth Development

The Glasgow Hawks youth development programme, sponsored by Bank of Ireland, continues to go from strength to strength and I would encourage you all to read the column by our Club Development Manager, Grant Talbot. A cornerstone of our programme our Development XV (under 20) and so I am also delighted to announce that our Development XV are scheduled to play a very powerful side from Christ’s College Canterbury, New Zealand on Monday, September 29 here under lights at Old Anniesland. Christ’s College is now coached by the legendary Wales and British Lions internationalist, Rob Ackerman. While living in Scotland, Rob also coached Hawks for 18 successful months and everyone at Hawks is looking forward to seeing Rob again.


This fixture is one of a series of excellent fixtures for our Development XV including fixtures against Viadana (Italy), Constanta (Romania) and Scottish Exiles U’20.


Sponsors

I am pleased to announce that all our major sponsors are once again on board. Currently, many businesses are looking to cut back therefore everyone at Hawks is extremely grateful to:

M&Co.
Anglo Irish Bank
Greaves Sports
Greens Health and Fitness
Corum Property
Samurai Sportswear
Gibson Pension & Investments

In addition to our current sponsors, I am delighted to announce that the Royal Navy have agreed to a major new, five-figure sponsorship deal which covers both senior and junior sections at Hawks. Hawks have a strong connection with the Royal Navy through Craig Hodgkinson and for those of you at Hodgie's memorial match back in May 2007 you will remember the Sea King helicopter flying into Old Anniesland to drop off the match ball. You will see more of the same at some point this season.


Kilts2Kenya

On Saturday, September 20, the date of our home fixture against Edinburgh Academicals FC, Ally Maclay is organising a Ladies Day to support his Kilts2Kenya charity. Before Ally heads off to player professional rugby in Hong Kong, he and current Hawks player, Ricky Munday, are planning on climbing Africa's three highest peaks in three weeks! Peaks to be scaled are Mount Stanley, Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro. Please check out www.kilts2kenya.com for more info on their progress and also the club website for info on Ladies’ Day.


Next home game

Saturday, September 20 versus Edinburgh Academicals FC



Kenny Baillie

Chief Executive

06.09.2008

This article was posted on 4-Sep-2008, 20:36 by Hugh Barrow.