Andy Hill believes it’s an honour to have been made captain at Hamilton Rugby Club and intends to help turn Laigh Bent into a fortress again.Having been relegated from the National League last season, Hill is looking at a tough season in the Championship League A as Hamilton try to get back in one season.The 26-year-old believes home form — and keeping it tight at the back — will be key to their fortunes.With Richie Maxton and Davie Gemmell installed as the new management team, Andy hopes progress will be steady.He said: “It’s a big year and, with only one team going up, we know it’s going to be tough — we need to try to make sure we’re in a position to get promotion.“It’s vitally important to get off to a good start. We’ve been in Premier B, against some of the best teams in the country, down to the National League and now Championship A, and we feel that we should be a National League club aiming for the Premiership.“It’s important in the first four or five games to get off to a winning start, which then gives a winning mentality to the boys.“Given how this league is, there isn’t really a good time to be losing games, so it’s going to be about winning as much as we can, playing as well as we can as a unit, pushing ourselves, and making sure that our home form improves.“We need to turn Laigh Bent back into the fortress it was, and make other teams fearful of coming here.“That hasn’t been the case for a while, losing at home has been a problem for us.“We also need to look at defence because we’ve been conceding too many points.“We’ve been scoring well enough, but we need to realise that what we’re conceding is just as important, if not more so.”Hill added: “Having been relegated last season, the big thing is to make sure we can get back to where we think we should be.“Relegation was obviously never our goal, we want to get back to playing Premiership rugby, and the least we wanted to achieve was National League survival, so to fail was a big disappointment.“We didn’t think we were the second-worst team in the division, but the league table doesn’t lie."Andy, who is a PE teacher and pupil support liaison at Lesmahagow High, has enjoyed a good season personally, which saw him pick up the SRU National League Player of the Year award before being made club captain.Hill said: “It has been a good year for me. I won Hamilton’s Player of the Year and the National League Player of the Year, but to be made captain is great.“It’s my local club, and it’s an honour.”Read
