New schools cup format unveiled

A NEW format for the Brewin Dolphin Scottish Schools rugby competitions has been announced, with organisers hoping that the refined tournaments will lead to fewer mismatches and, in turn, help to continue grow the sport.

Over the last two years various changes have been brought in, including allowing schools to decide which level – cup, plate or bowl – they should be involved in and a pool stage, in a bid to prevent one-sided matches.

However, even in the pool stages last year there were mismatches, eventual winners Stewart’s Melville defeating the Royal High School 90-0 and Gordonstoun 105-0 in the under-18 Cup for example.

This led Scottish Rugby’s head of community rugby Colin Thomson to look at ways to further improve the structure to avoid youngsters who are new to the sport being put off right from the outset.

He said: “We have to always look at the competitions we run and see how we can improve them. We have to be big enough and say that the changes we made over the last two years didn’t work as we would have liked. We have come up with a new format and we believe it will see a lot more competitive games being played.

“We measure competitive matches as ones that end with the sides 13 points or less apart and, although it may be quite abstract, it is a useful marker. We hope the new competitions will improve the standard throughout the levels and give appropriate opportunities to teams to play against others of similar standards.”

At both under-16 and under-18 level the Cup has been made a scaled down knockout event, in the lower age-group just two teams playing a preliminary round before the last 16 and in the older age-group three preliminary ties taking place.

The revision of the format will also see more opportunities for schools in the Plate and Bowl by delivering an increased number of fixtures for the emerging rugby schools.

This is also supported by the decision to regionalise the Plate competition with 16 teams competing from four regions: North; Midlands; Edinburgh, Lothians and Borders and Glasgow. In the under-16 Plate event West Lothian Schools – a composite side put together from high schools in the county – will be playing their first-ever match this month in the preliminary round.

Coach Paul McLeod said: “I have been delighted with the response of the youngsters since we started an inter-schools sevens event last year, so we looked at the possibility of getting a XV-a-side team together and trials will continue on Friday ahead of our Larbert High School match.”

The tournaments will also finish earlier this year with both Cup finals set to be played in late November, with Plates and Bowls stretching into 2012.