Johnny Drake has been made the on-field captain for Helensburgh Rugby club for the upcoming season.

Drake was vice captain for the Grizzlies last year, and after Ally Rogers’ departure he will lead the team out this season, ahead of their BT West Division One campaign.

The utility back will also be filling in at scrum-half due to injury, but most of his game-time has been either on the wing or at full-back.

Helensburgh Rugby Club head coach Adam Hart said: “Johnny Drake will be the captain this year.

“He was vice captain last year so that’s been decided, he’s a scrum half at the moment,– he’s filling in for a guy who’s got an injury just now but his primary position is on the wing.”

Hart said that the club captain will be decided at a later date, with Drake leading the team on the field.

He said: “That’s to be decided, that’ll be decided towards the start of the season, but that’s more of an unofficial thing rather than an official thing.“

And Hart is hoping that his new lieutenant can lead the backs to some dazzling displays as he looks to continue Helensburgh’s philosophy of offloading rugby.

He added: “Our style of play is very much backs play, we like to model it on 7s play, we want to keep the ball live and obviously picking the right times to play the phases.

“Basically what I want to do is give the players the tools and it’s up to them to make the options on the pitch, it works best in that scenario so it’s mainly trying to keep the ball alive, offloading and high tempo play.”

And Hart has recruited a helping hand to aid in training recently.

Many top rugby clubs use judo and other martial arts to help strengthen their core muscles, and Hart was able to get Steve McLaren – Scotland’s tae kwon do coach who is based in the Helensburgh area – to give a twist on the usual pre-season training.

Hart said he club had called on McLaren’s services before, but in the past it was more fitness based rather than gearing the sessions towards rugby skills.

He said: “Pre-season has started off very well, although we had poor numbers on Saturday (last week) because a lot of people were away. We had Steve McClaren come down and do a session with us.

“It was good, it was all transferable skills.Steve has a lot of classes in town so he’s local and he’s got a judo background as well as tae kwon do.”