It is essential that members who may have a chance to be involved in the consultation process for the new school to consider the following points and get them across at any meetings.

Cumnock Rugby Club are supportive of the new school and can forsee obvious advantages of having as many potential rugby players on our doorstep. This comes at a key time in rugby development with the announcement of a school of rugby at Auchinleck in addition to the one at Cumnock which was the first in Scotland. Cumnock RFC has around 200 boys and girls playing from all schools in the area, it is therefore ideally placed to be one of the building blocks to integrate pupils from these different schools. In fact they all currently play at Cumnock with no integration issues at all. Cumnock RFC is one of the largest clubs/voluntary organisations in Ayrshire and has one of the biggest youth sections in the West of Scotland.

However, it is essential that Cumnock Rugby Club are guaranteed formally and in writing that we will always have access to rugby pitches at all times. We require the same access to the same number of pitches as at present. An even more important requirement is that it will not cost Cumnock Rugby Club to use the pitches for games or training. The current status quo must continue where we have free access to training areas at Broomfield and also free access to the pitches for games. If this is not guaranteed then Cumnock Rugby Club would not exist as it presently does as we simply could not afford to pay for training and games for the 15 teams we currently run.

One further issue which will be crucial for the survival of the club is continuity. As pitches are utilised for school builds or play areas there have to be arrangements made to allow Cumnock teams to continue to play and train.

We feel with careful consideration and planning these concerns can be addressed and could in fact lead to significant advantages for integration and running of the new schools.

We are a community club and have a massive amount of youngsters involved in our teams and this is giving these youngsters a positive social aspect to focus on. With over 300 members in total we take children from 5 years of age and integrate them into a sporting environment which last throughout life. It is therefore essential that our members impress at any consultation meetings the huge amount of good work we have carried out for over 50 years now. We therefore need a cast iron guarantee that there will be no increase in costs for our club.