The Herald reports

Weir proof that Cathkin's uphill battle is worth it
Published on 1 March 2012

Alasdair Reid

At 6pm today, Sir Bill Gammell, the former Scotland winger and now multi-millionaire chairman of Cairn Energy, will open the new fitness and conditioning suite at Edinburgh's Fettes College, his old school.

According to the publicity material for the event, the new facility will be 'customised for our students to develop and improve all aspects of their physical fitness and strength' and will 'motivate and inspire them to become stronger and more capable competitors'.

Well, you want all the advantages you can get in this life, and fees of £9050 per term can be relied upon to bring them. In pursuit of physical excellence, pupils at Fettes can also make use of a number of synthetic and grass pitches, three cricket squares, two squash courts and sundry other facilities in a purpose-built sports club.

Things are particularly splendid for the Fettes rugby teams, and Sir Bill will surely be impressed by his alma mater's commitment to the sport in which he excelled. Aside from pristine pitches, the rugby lads also have the services of Steve Bates, formerly head coach of Newcastle Falcons, the Border Reivers and England Saxons, and a touring itinerary that has taken them to Spain, Holland, South Africa, Chile and Argentina in recent years.

Which is a good deal further than Cathkin High have travelled in the same time. For them, getting a team on the pitch is a weekly battle against adversity – not least because they don't currently have a pitch at all. So tonight, while Sir Bill is cutting the ribbon and enjoying the canapes in Edinburgh, Cathkin coach Ali Jones will be fighting a familiar fight as he struggles to ensure his players can scrape together the basics for a game. Just as he has done for 36 years.

But wait. There is an interesting twist to this tale. Thirty-five years have gone by since Fettes produced a Scotland internationalist, the fellow in question being Sir Bill himself. At Cathkin, they only have to look back four days for theirs.

When Duncan Weir trotted on to the Murrayfield pitch as a second-half replacement against France last Sunday, the thrill he felt at winning his first cap was matched by the pride of Jones, who had watched the tyro grow from a sprig of a 12-year-old into a barrel-chested Test playmaker. Not that Jones ever had much doubt that he would go all the way. "In all my years coaching rugby, " he's the best I've ever seen," he says. "It became apparent pretty quickly that there was something exceptional there," the retired biology teacher continues. "I can recall a third/fourth year game when we were short of a player. The boys said I should give Duncan a run, but he was still in first year. I told him I would put him on for five minutes, play him at scrum-half, but take him off if he looked under pressure. By the end, he had scored two tries, two conversions and was man of the match."

All very heartening, but very untypical as well. Cathkin has turned out a few decent players – a number of them at Hamilton or Cambuslang – but it has been a struggle against myriad obstacles – cultural, financial, logistical – that have gone along with trying to make rugby flourish in a state school in west-central Scotland.

You could call it an uphill battle. For years, Cathkin had two pitches that sloped so badly they were dubbed Hill 45 and Hill 90. In 2006, Hill 45 disappeared when the school was rebuilt, although the local authority promised there would be 'no diminution of rugby provision at Cathkin High'. Yet, despite a new pitch being laid out, drainage and legal problems mean it remains unfinished. Hill 90 – the steeper of the two – remained in service, but it was barely fit for purpose. Its pitches were vandalised and only replaced after a campaign by parents. New posts did the business until they were blown down in the recent gales.

At least the players of today maintain a connection with Weir. The strips they use are the same ones donated by a building company when he was in S3 – around seven years ago.

"They are getting a bit threadbare," Jones admits. "We've just replaced the first and second years' strips after the PTA gave us some money. Prior to that, they were wearing strips that were 10 years old. I've tried phoning round to get sponsorship, but these are harsh financial times. The school has very little money to spend on these things. Two years ago we ran out, so some former pupils held a fund-raising event, gave us about £1100 and we were able to start rugby up again.
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"What frustrates me is that I go to these award ceremonies and people are patting themselves on the back for what they're doing for sport in the area, but I'm still in the position where I'm scrambling to keep the team going. We don't have enough money for transport and we don't have anywhere to play."

Jones does not blame the school nor is he opening up a new front in the class war or blaming the inverse snobbery of Scotland's football culture. He has good relations with a number of coaches at private schools, although he admits it has been a battle for acceptance at times.

"I suspect that some have a reluctance to play against state schools," he says carefully. "Teams come over to Cathkin, see the sloping pitch and that maybe confirms their preconceptions. All of us at the school have tried hard to dispel things like that, and I think a player like Duncan can only help. I just feel that a number of selectors and coaches would rather look at the independent schools on a Saturday morning, because they reckon that's where they're going to find the next generation. Very rarely will they come to a state school game."

Someone once said that rugby runs on love, not money, and Jones's sense of purpose is proof of that.

"Quite a few boys have come from pretty deprived areas and I like to think that Cathkin rugby has helped them on the way in terms of life skills as well as rugby," he adds. "I've had former pupils come back and tell me that it was school rugby that pointed me in the right direction."

This article was posted on 1-Mar-2012, 08:05 by Hugh Barrow.