As most of you will be aware on Friday evening Hamilton attended the SRU’s Special General Meeting to vote on league restructure pertaining to the placement of Super Six clubs, amateur team.

The original motion sought to place these 6 teams into National 1 while promoting the top six teams from National 1 into the Premiership.

An interesting procedural point was outlined at the beginning of the meeting, where it was explained that any motion or amendment could be withdrawn by the originator at any point. That included the main motion, should the clubs in the room amend it to a point where SRU Council did not support it. This may seem innocuous at first but as the Super Six has been imposed on the league structure with all its imposed repercussions, this effectively created a ‘no deal’ position, of leaving the Super Six amateur teams in the Premiership with all the ‘Super hub’ and financial pooling that came with it. As we were discussing the two meaningful amendments, it was implied by the chair that if the clubs backed them, then the original motion would be withdrawn. That result would not suit the wishes of a lot of the clubs in the room and will no doubt have influenced the vote.

The Falkirk amendment that sought to place the super six amateur teams in a reserve league was defeated by a reasonable majority by a show of hands.

The Haddington motion which Hamilton were voting for, that sought to hold the Super six amateur teams in National 1 for a period of three years before allowing promotion was up next and was also defeated but by a narrower majority by a show of hands. While no numbers were stated it was obviously not close enough to demand a ballot paper vote.

This left the original motion to be voted on in its original state bar a one word tweak about the name of the premiership. At this point Hamilton took this opportunity to point out that we were disappointed that we were being forced to vote to place clubs in a league, when we did not know what players were going to be playing in those teams. We pointed out that there had been a year and a half to sort the rules of duel registration and it was not acceptable that this had not been done before the vote. Our comments were acknowledged by the chair and we then moved to a vote.

Hamilton voted for the motion as we believe this is the better of two evils and was closest to our original position on supporting the Haddington amendment.

So next season National 1 will lose six teams up into the Premiership and gain six teams from the Super Six clubs. Promotion will be restricted to one team up into the premiership per season, so for a minimum of the next six seasons we will be watching and hopefully competing in a league where the Super Six influence will be the greatest. We will see what comes of it?

Ross