Kirkcaldy Rugby Club working hard to engage with supporters

The club is running a number of online activities to stay engaged with its supporters, as well as helping the community by taking collections for local foodbanks.

Director of Rugby, Corgi George, said when lockdown began the onus was on the club to reach out.

“There was still a lot of rugby to play in the league. Also we have a partnership with Balwearie High School where we teach rugby to all first and second year PE students, plus, I run a school at the after school club to keep the pupils engaged a bit more.

“So I was wondering what we were going to do about all that. How were we going to keep everyone engaged when everything was on lockdown?

“We had to put a strategy together with the stuff we would do either face to face or in groups, and find out if we could do it electronically.”

The club now runs fitness sessions, a satellite foodbank, and a whole series of events online including a brand new podcast.

“The fitness sessions run on a Tuesday and Thursday on social media,” Corgi said.

“We open two days a week for a couple of hours to take deliveries from club members and the local community for the Foodbank and then we’ll deliver it.

“The engagement there has been incredible. I had a boot full of stuff this week from Raith Fruits that they delivered to us when they heard what we were doing.

“It’s so nice to be able to hand that sort of thing over from the rugby family to people who are less fortunate, and we’ve had a lot of support from Julie Dickson who is Community Development Team Manager at Fife Council.”

“The club holds a weekly online diary for club members and Thursdays are dedicated to the carers, nurses and people on the frontline. That’s very personal to me, my daughter works at the hub at Victoria Hospital, so it is very important that we show those people that we support them.”

Corgi says the response online has been “phenomenal” and in addition to the other activities, the club has now launched the ‘MonBlues Podcast’, available on the club’s YouTube page, hosted by Corgi and Muzz Oliver.

Guests so far have been Kirkcaldy’s Scottish internationalist Murray McCallum, rugby refs Hollie Davidson, Mike Adamson and Sam Grove-White, whilst this week’s episode features the School of Hard Knocks.

“We’ve done a whole load now and the first three have gone up. The first one was with Murray who is one of our temporary part-time coaches.

“He plays for Edinburgh Rugby and has won a number of Scotland caps. He volunteers with us and it’s tremendous that he’s giving back to something he’s got so much out of.

“It was great and he had a lot of funny stories.

“For the second one, I’m an elite referee now so I used my contacts to get three of them on, and for this week we have the Director and Head Coach from the School of Hard Knocks charity.

“So it’s a weekly podcast coming out every Wednesday. It involves rugby but it will give people like the School of Hard Knocks a chance to advertise their wares.

“We hope people like what they see but if they think there is something else we should be doing, or someone in particular that we should be talking to, then please let us know!”

He added: “We’re just the same as everyone else who is trying really hard just now.

“We aren’t getting any money in just now but we just want to still be there for then community.”