Club Scene: Carrick Academy

Sports Journalist

Tuesday 21 February 2012

These past few days, the teachers and pupils at Carrick Academy in Ayrshire have joined forces to prepare for their Under-18s' first appearance in a Scottish rugby final at Murrayfield tomorrow.

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Neil Drysdale

The art department have made banners, the home economics staff have created flags, the school has already filled half-a-dozen buses for the trip, and, akin to what happened when the whole community worked their socks off to ensure the quarter-final tie against Peebles went ahead – "It was like the Beechgrove Garden but it paid dividends," said the ubiquitous Carrick coach, Gordon Brown – there is an uplifting sense of a group pulling together in a common cause.

For too long, rugby matters at school level in Scotland have been perceived as an elitist milieu. Brown, though, is exactly the sort of solid citizen who exists to shatter such stereotypes. A former Glasgow age-group player, with a long-standing commitment to Irvine and now Kilmarnock, the modern studies teacher has made a virtue of necessity, whether liaising with the Scottish Rugby Union to establish a School of Rugby, overseeing the introduction of an SVQ apprentice scheme at Carrick Academy, forging links and gaining sponsorship with the local ASDA store, and operating in tandem with, rather than in opposition to, football, ensuring the school has excelled with a roll of just 520 pupils.Brown stressed that a large part of this was due to the labours of the head teacher, Keith Webster, and the emergence of a number of genuinely gifted performers, including Blair Jardine (a fine football goalkeeper, who has gained promotion to the Scotland under-18 rugby squad) and the speedy Glasgow winger, John Dewar. One suspects, though, that, despite his efforts at offloading the credit, the bulk of the praise is owed to Brown."It has taken us nine years to move to a situation where we can compete against the likes of St Columba's and Jordanhill, and, realistically, we know that we are going to have some years where we do better than others," said Brown, whose charges have beaten Peebles and Linlithgow in the quarter- and semi-finals of the Plate competition, en route to booking their place at the national stadium. "I think we are showing that state schools can flourish at a high level and one of the biggest reasons for that success is that we have allowed the youngsters to play both rugby and football, and co-ordinated the curriculum so they can play both sports."With us being such a small school, we can't afford to cut our own throats by pitting sports against one another. We only have 20 boys in the sixth year, so they play football on a Monday and rugby on a Wednesday and lads like Blair Jardine have also become involved with Kilmarnock RFC. So it is a pretty unique set-up we have here."The way that people rallied round to make sure the quarter-final went ahead summed up what we are about. The pitch was frozen in the morning, but we put tons of sand on it, and everybody who could help came out and did so. Rugby is thriving in Burns country, as this column has regularly observed. Whether affirming the exploits of Ayr, the development of Marr College, or the labours carried out by such stalwarts as Brown, the region is breaking down barriers in every direction. Carrick deserve to continue to reap the benefits of their toil.

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Club Scene: Carrick Academy

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