AN EAST OF SCOTLAND league rugby club will be playing for pints as well as points this season if a proposed new incentive package gets rolled out.
Wardie-based Broughton, who finished fifth in Division One of the East League, are advertising "individual financial incentive schemes" for "top performers" in the coming season.
President Mark Brown is hoping the rewards will help give the club a
n extra edge as they bid to push up the leagues.
"Financially, we have been helped by hosting the Edinburgh touch rugby leagues for the past 12 weeks which has brought money in on summer evenings when the clubhouse would otherwise have been closed," said Brown.
"All options are open at this stage regarding incentives but there is an outline plan to further encourage players to attend training on wet and dark December evenings in the hope that this will improve our standing in the leagues.
"If, say, there are more than 20 players at training for a specific period then we could reward those players with beer vouchers.
"We are trying to encourage the guys to have a more professional outlook because it is difficult for small clubs to attract players when there are around seven clubs in the area. In the past our team has often picked itself; we want to encourage more competition for places.
"Giving tokens or vouchers as a form of win bonus would hopefully create an extra edge because we believe a good chance exists to win our league and move up."
Key to Broughton's aspirations, says Brown, is the retention of Graham Bonner as club coach while developing a director of rugby role to build on work done in conjunction with neighbours Edinburgh Accies and Trinity Accies who also contribution to a youth team called the BATS.
Captain Dan Arrandale addressed a recent meeting and, along with vice captain, Johnny Beaton, urged the 25 players present to sign up to a Code of Conduct.
Meanwhile, Broughton's pre-season training officially gets underway on Tuesday at Raeburn Place in conjunction with Edinburgh Accies. The early rounds of the cup are likely to be staged on August 16 depending on the outcome of a Championship Committee meeting at Murrayfield tonight aimed at implementing the wishes of last week's SRU annual meeting.
Whether Border clubs, some of whom were in the vanguard so far as moves to re-model the cup on regional lines, compete is still open to question, according to Terence Froud, the Hawick president.
Speaking to Scottish Rugby Radio, Froud said: "There is still to be another meeting in the Borders to decide whether we will take part in the cup.
"There is a huge body of opinion that says we're not.
"We have to look at the fixtures and see what congestion is going to be impounded on the clubs if they have to take part in a Border League, cup fixtures and an extended league without playing on international days.
"I feel there is room for everything if we use the eight international weekends.
"If we all decide to come out of the cup it will not render it meaningless, but the financial constraints are really difficult.
"We had a tough run last year (with games at] Dumfries and Caithness (which were] far enough away to cause some hardship."
• SRU chief executive Gordon McKie says the door is not completely closed with regard to the possibility of the governing body investing in London Scottish. The exiles had hoped for special funding to get them two promotions up the English Leagues to National Division One which would be a stepping stone to the Premiership.
"We spent three or four months speaking to London Scottish about their desire to propel a team through the leagues in England.
"Ultimately there were two reasons: one, it doesn't really make sense for us to inject professional players into what is, by and large, an amateur set-up. That wouldn't be in the players best interests to be in that environment.
"Primarily for rugby reasons we couldn't support it at this stage, but we have said if the team got into National League One, which is potentially by then full-time, we might look at it again.
"The second reason was down to the extent of the funding and where it was coming from and we couldn't get complete clarity on that.
"Mainly it was down to rugby reasons."
The full article contains 746 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
