CARTHA Queen's Park will offer a further demonstration of the power of building relationships with local authorities when they stage the second Jenkins & Marr Glasgow City Sevens today.
The BT Premiership 2 club may not be able to compete with Melrose in terms of scale but, as far as inclusivity is concerned, their competition is the market leader.
As well as England's top club, Sale Sharks, and CUS Torino, from Glasgow's twin city in Italy, all three Scottish pro sides and teams from every one of the SRU's regions are taking part.
While invitations to Borders sevens tournaments still operate on a grace-and-favour basis, Cartha's target has been to get the leading club from every part of Scotland involved."In terms of attendance we are not as big as Melrose, but in terms of the rugby on display we are not far away, and outside Melrose nothing comes close to us, " said Brian Gervaise, Cartha's president.
Cartha have their own long tradition to build on since, first as Cartha Athletic Club before the merger with Queen's Park, the club have staged an annual sevens since just after the Second World War.
As ambition within the club grew, they decided, around the turn of the century, upon a strategy of building the event, and last year persuaded the city council to offer its support.
With CUS Torino to be the council's guests at a civic reception this weekend, there are clear mutual benefits, and Gervaise noted that this is a perfect example of how clubs must work with local authorities. "Our relationship is growing because in so many ways our agenda runs absolutely parallel to the council's when we consider issues such as health, crime prevention and social deprivation, " he said.
"Particularly given the situation the SRU have found themselves in financially, this is the way forward. Every club in the country should be looking at getting involved with their local authorities."
While many in the club game still bleat about the lack of financial support from Murrayfield, the example set by Cartha is an important one, not least because it is manifesting itself in progress at first-team level.
"I'm not sure anyone here believed we could get as close as we did to reaching Premier 1 when this season began - Cartha were runners-up in Premier 2 and lost a Scottish Cup semi-final in injury time - but it is not unrealistic now to think about bridging the gap, " said Gervaise.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article