Biggar coach Ants Posa calls for season to start six weeks early

Jan 6 2011 by Andrew McGilvray, Hamilton Advertiser

BIGGAR Rugby Club coach Ants Posa this week called for the season to be brought forward by six weeks in a bid to prevent winter call-offs.

The Hartreemill club haven’t played since beating Kirkcaldy 25-20 on November 20, and Posa has had a difficult time maintaining enthusiasm and momentum over that seven-week lay-off.

New Zealand-born Posa reckons change is needed from grassroots level upwards in a bid to maintain interest in the sport.

He said: “I think we should start six weeks earlier and that way we could finish the league earlier.

“I also think that when Premier clubs are playing each other their 2nds and Colts should go with them, or play at home against their counterparts on the same day. That way the club would be buzzing every fortnight.”

Posa added: “To be fair the new Premier 1 and 2 play-off is a step in the right direction but breaks of over a month are no use to anybody.

“Anybody who is against a winter shut-down is not putting rugby first and it needs to change from Premier 1 down to the grassroots.”

Biggar are preparing for a Premier Cup Pool C clash at Ardrossan Accies on Saturday and Ants just hopes the game goes ahead.

He said: “It’s been really hard recently. We tried to play a friendly against Peebles on Monday, which would have been great because it was a derby, but part of the pitch was frozen so it was called off 15 minutes before we were due to play.

“That was enormously frustrating but we were able to train without floodlights for the first time in a while so that was something at least.

“One of the local farmers has given us a horse shed to train in and that’s great, but it’s no substitute for the real thing and match fitness is going to be a problem.”

The fact that the winter weather and a two-week festive break has left everybody on the sidelines isn’t much comfort to Biggar, who are left battling for Premier 2 survival.

Posa said: “Everybody is in the same boat but this is a really important stage of the season for us, so that isn’t really a consolation for us.

“However, we need to deal with whatever is put in front of us so there’s no point in me complaining about it – if you got me started on the Scottish weather we’d be here all day!

“The silver lining in the dark cloud is that the fixture list after Christmas previously was looking pretty sparse and now it’s full. We had been worried about how to keep people going.

“While the winter shutdown might have helped other teams get players back from injury, it didn’t really suit us because we had our injured players back and had won three games on the trot.

“It has been hard to maintain enthusiasm and keep the momentum going because while training indoors now and again isn’t too bad, constantly training indoors is no use.

“The encouraging thing for me though is that I gave the players a break because they had really just hit a wall, but the numbers were excellent when we tried to get the game on at Peebles.”