Bulls keen to rip it up and start over again
Hamilton Rugby Club coach Alex Edmonstone hopes all of Scottish rugby can wipe the slate clean and start again next season.
The Bulls coach says this has been a “challenging”season, and is keen to see the back of it for several reasons.
A superb 50-14 win at Preston in their last game on Saturday will leave Hamilton somewhere between eighth and 10th in the 12-team Tennent’s National League 2 once the dust has settled.
Hamilton scored their points through a Scott Whitelaw double and tries from Josh White, Scott Alexander, Gary Adams, Grant Mccowan and Billy Simpson, with Owen Mcleish slotting five conversions and a penalty, and Grant Mccowan adding a conversion.
But it hasn’t been a pleasant campaign for several teams, and Edmonstone hopes the new season just begins in September as normal, and everyone can get on with playing the game.
He said:“we will finish somewhere between eighth and 10th, depending on what happens with the rest of the fixtures.
“It depends on what Kirkcaldy and Peebles do, but in their last game of the season they play each other, and we’re safe for this season.
“It has been challenging. There are three factors: every week I’d say all coaches have had Covid to contend with, so we’ve had to change teams even as late as Saturday mornings.
“Players have had a bit of a stop-start pre-season, so we’ve had more injuries, and people are catching up on holidays and weddings.
“We’re an amateur sport, so you can’t have a go at players, because everyone deserves their holidays and to celebrate weddings, etc, but I’d say we’ve had more of those disturbances than normal.
“It has been a case of trying to cobble together two teams in a lot of weeks, and put the best we could out there.
“It has been a tough and challenging season.”
Edmonstone hopes to be able to prepare for the new season like they did pre-covid, and to get on with things as best they can.
He said:“fixtures will be released and we’re assuming they’ll have a start date of September, as they normally do.
“It’s still a 12-team season, so it will be a long campaign, so we’ll try to prepare as normal, with hopefully two months of pre-season.
“Hopefully we can get a good pre-season under our belts and hit the ground running in September.”