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New season arrives

New season arrives

Hugh Barrow28 Aug 2018 - 15:40
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Offside Line interviews Fin Gillies

After missing out on a Super 6 franchise and only just avoiding relegation last season, Glasgow Hawks are approaching this campaign with a renewed sense of hope. An agreement with Kelvinside Academy to play at Balgray has given them a new home after difficulties with the Anniesland pitch last year, and head coach Finlay Gillies is confident that, as long as they can find some consistency, his squad will fare far better this time round.
Consistency can be an elusive quality, of course, and Hawks certainly found that last season, slumping alarmingly until confirming their Premiership place with a thumping win over Jed-Forest in the play-offs. The absence of some players on representative duty was a big factor in the team’s loss of form, and Gillies is well aware that continuity of selection will be crucial. If they have that, he is convinced, his team will be able to compete with the best.

“Definitely,” he said. “We were second in the league after five or six games last season and then we just fell off a cliff. We lost seven Scotland Under-20s, we lost guys to the pro game – it was a tough season.
“We used 54 players last year, which is quite a large number. So, there was a lack of continuity in the playing roster, in where we were playing – we were a bit unsettled by quite a few different things. It was just a tough season. But we’ve definitely looked at a few things, and tried to address them, learn from them and move forwards.
“Kelvinside is an exciting opportunity, and if we can keep together the majority of our squad, and if we don’t end up using that mid-50s range of players, then we should be in a much better place than we were last year. We’re just looking for consistency in everything we do.
The fearlessness of youth
“It’s a young man’s league. It’s not the kind of gnarled, 30s to mid-30s guys it once was. Scotland Under-20s players are important to every team. It’s how long you lose them for and when, and who you lose them against that can be quite telling for your entire season, actually.”
“There’s definitely excitement. We’ve got a really young squad. We’ve managed to keep a good spine with some older guys there, and we’ve got some exciting young guys to come through.
“Our point of difference this year at Glasgow Hawks has got to be the fact that we’re the most unified squad. We’re still desperate to play for each other.
“We potentially don’t have some of the X factor players that we’ve had in the past, so we’ve got to find something else. We’ll have to do that as a squad.
“We’re not naive thinking this is going to be an easy year. We’re going to be fighting hard. If we can make little tiny gains . . . .
“I know we’re going to be competitive. It’s what we get right, and how often we get it right. We’re not going to be in a position where we can afford to be five, 10 per cent off and still win a game. We’re going to have to be on it every single weekend. We’re going to have to have our older leaders leading better than they’ve ever done before, and we’re going to have to have these young guys out-performing where they’ve been before and learning incredibly quick.”

One advantage this year for a young squad such as Hawks should be the absence of relegation. A slow slide down the table can induce a sinking feeling in players, affecting their ability to play confident rugby, whereas knowing where you will be playing the following season tends to help in maintaining self-belief. At least, that is one theory. Gillies, by contrast, does not see it making a difference – and nor does he think that Hawks’ exclusion from Super 6 will be a demotivating factor for his own players.
Plenty to prove
“I don’t think the lack of relegation means it’s easier. We’re still fighting for that top-four, top-six spot again. I don’t think it will change anybody’s opinion – it certainly hasn’t changed the way I’ve approached the season. I’ve not slacked off because there’s no relegation – I don’t think anybody would. The players who are ambitious and want to be involved with Super 6 will still be motivated to be a part of that – to win the league, win the Premiership in its own right. It’s the last season of the Premiership, so people will want to be the final winners of that.
“The club won’t be in Super 6 – that doesn’t necessarily mean that certain players won’t be in Super 6. I think it’s a shop window for some of these guys. It’s not demotivating, no. I think all these guys play rugby because they love rugby, not because they’re chasing Super 6 contracts.
“A few guys have already moved on and gone to different places. They’ve gone there with the ambition of playing Super 6, and that’s fine. The guys who have stayed are guys who are staying for the fight and want to come and compete and play for Hawks, which is excellent.
“We’ve had a fairly large turnover. It’s been pretty well publicised losing the second 15, so there’s a massive turnover of players from that perspective. There’s a few guys who have gone to other Premier One clubs.
“It’s just the nature of the beast. A few guys have retired. A couple of different people have moved on elsewhere. Yeah, it’s been a fairly sizeable turnover, but we’ve managed to retain some really important people.
“We’re not fretting over what we’ve lost. We’re going to work hard and pull together with what we have, and we’re excited to see what we can
Still only 29, Gillies firmly fits the profile of the kind of young and ambitious coach the SRU wants to run its Super 6 franchises, and he has been linked with a move to Heriot’s, where he would join up with his fellow-teacher Phil Smith, in time for next season. Time will tell whether that partnership materialises, but for the moment he is playing down any such move.
“I suppose it’s all a bit up in the air at the minute,” he replied when asked if he expected to be on the move next summer. “I don’t really know, is the answer. Obviously I’ve got a certain affinity to Hawks: it’s a club that’s been good to me, and it was pretty disappointing for me personally when they weren’t able to be part of the Super 6.
“I’ve got a teaching career. I still want to pursue a rugby coaching career. There’s going to be six jobs there [in Super 6] and I would say that four or five of them are already filled, so there’s probably not a pathway for me this year to be a part of it when it starts. But looking forward it’s hopefully something I can push into.”

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