Scott full of confidence that new-look club rugby season can be a successful one for Ross Sutherland
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Ross Sutherland believe their new-look league for the 2020/21 season gives them a good chance of success.
Fixtures were released for the upcoming campaign last week, pitting the Stags against seven other sides home and away.
Some of those teams are familiar faces for the Invergordon outfit, with Moray, Banff and Lossiemouth all regular opponents in recent years.
Aberdeen Grammar are the only second team in the division.
Kinloss, Huntly and Stornoway make up the remainder of the Caledonia North Competition Two.
After a turbulent season last time around that saw Ross Sutherland propping up the rest of Caley North Two when rugby was halted in March, club president John Scott is confident fortunes will turn around this year and they will challenge at the top end of the table.
“We like the look of the league,” Scott insisted.
“Scottish Rugby had to make sure that there wasn’t too much travelling, but that when we do travel it’s a similar standard.
“We’re in a league with very similar teams who we will quite happily play against. I would say we’ll fancy our chances in that league with the squad that we have.
“There will be a couple of additions to the squad and a few old faces back as well, so it’s exciting.”
Scottish Rugby had been looking at several different formats for next season.
Scott believes they have done about as good of a job as it was possible to do, and praised the governing body for their handling of the pandemic so far.
“It was an almost impossible job for the SRU,” Scott reasoned.
“They will have been scratching their heads and looking at various permutations, but I have nothing but praise for them.
“Throughout all age groups at the club, we have kept our tracking and tracing going, we have been doing temperature checks, playing by the rule book.
“The Scottish Government have recognised what the SRU are doing – yes there have been an unfortunate few cases at one team in Edinburgh, but overall rugby is behaving with Covid at the moment and long may that continue so that we can get back to playing games sooner rather than later.
“It’s a week-by-week basis just now, and we’re pretty happy with where we are in terms of our development.”
Read the full edition of today's Ross-shire Journal here.
