New coaching team is part of long-term strategy at Ross Sutherland, according to club president Scott
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Ross Sutherland club president John Scott says the decision to expand their coaching team was made as part of the long-term strategy for the club.
A six-strong group has been announced as taking over coaching responsibilities, including former head coach John Mann, Ian Thomson, David Kennedy, Murray Kennedy, David Gill and Scott himself.
It is one of several changes to the structure of the Naval Grounds outfit, with Andy Mackay also taking over as captain and heading a player leadership group.
Scott believes these are all necessary changes to make sure the Stags are doing their best for the potential reach the club has.
“We’ve got quite a wide, varied and deep skillset in our team of coaches,” Scott said.
“We had a longer term look at our development plan, and what the coaching set up should look like within that.
“We’ll work very closely with Andy Mackay and his player leadership group, that will include players from the Stags, the Wildcats and also our under-18s. I’m pretty excited about it.
“Ideally we want all of us there as much as possible.
“It’s vital that we give a consistent message to the players. We want to sit down in person with them and explain fully how we envisage managing this.”
Having an extended break from rugby, while nobody’s first choice, has at least allowed Ross Sutherland to make these significant changes with minimal disruption ahead of a potential return to training next week.
“I’ve been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but you don’t realise how much you miss rugby until it’s not there,” Scott admitted.
“We’ve been planning for a while, and hopefully with the way restrictions are envisaged to lift, we can begin training next week, but it might be the week after.
“We’ll just have to follow the advice from Scottish Rugby and the government on that.”
Read the full edition of today's Ross-shire Journal here.
