Austerity re-think as Exiles return to full-time

CHAMPIONSHIP strugglers London Scottish are set to up the ante in the recruitment market after revealing a return to fulltime status next season.

Cost-cutting measures last year led the Richmondbased side to adopt a hybrid squad of full and parttimers. However, after just six league victories and having been saved from relegation only by Rotherham’s inadequacies, the club has made a U-turn.

Chief executive Carson Russell told TRP: “Sustainability is our No.1 priority but we haven’t got the balance right between first team performance and what we can achieve commercially.

“We’ve been running a hybrid operation but to run that programme you actually need nearly 50 players because you’re effectively running two high performance teams.

“In order to do that we’ve needed extra facilities on Tuesday and Thursday nights and more coaches, medical and S&C staff, and when you do the sums the financial difference between running a hybrid programme and full-time one is not very much.”

Russell added: “Another downside is our full-timers effectively have to repeat a lot of what they do when the part-timers come in and when we analysed this season results, we’ve lost five or six games on the last play or by small margins.

“We feel if we go fulltime, with a squad of 32 plus some help from Premiership academies or other organisations like the Army, those results might change and we’ll be in a far healthier league position.”

Last week’s appointment of former London Irish lock Nic Rouse as head coach under rugby director Dave Morris has strengthened the off-field team.

Russell is now seeking additional finance, adding: “We’re setting out an aggressive commercial plan that will be more events-based using the assets we have as a brand.

“We want to be more visible in the community and the City and deliver experiences for sponsors rather than just put their name on the shirt.”