Helensburgh Rugby Club’s head coach Adam Hart has said having former Burgh boss Bill Macdonald back as a consultant coach at the club is proving to be a “big help”.

The Ardencaple side are currently bottom of the BT West Division 1 table, and will be hoping they turn around their fortunes similar to last year, where they won three of their last four games to stay up.

And Hart said having his experience around during training has proved helpful already.

He said: "Bill was the head coach in the season we won the Bowl at Muraayfield and has won the Scottish Cup before with Glasgow Hawks so it’s great having him back for myself to lean upon and in coaching sessions, and it’s been a big help.”

But Hart will face a tough task to keep the Burgh up, with two big fixtures coming in the next 10 days.

They first play league leaders Newton Stewart at home on Saturday, with the reverse fixture ending 77-3, with only 15 players able to travel down to Dumfries and Galloway.

And then the following week they are set to face Oban Lorne, who are one place above the Grizzlies and six points ahead.

But they will be set to face these teams with a raft of injuries, with 12 players ruled out in their last defeat against Kilmarnock.

He said: “The injury list has grown again, from the Kilmarnock game at the weekend there we had 12 injuries, seven to eight of them are people who have played a good handful of games this season, and that was the majority of our backline that was injured.

“Our key strike runners in Scott Simmons and Connor Slader were both injured.

“That was a big loss for us, and Steve Brown our other centre who broke his jaw the week before.”

But Hart is hoping that Simmons will be back to full fitness for Saturday, after getting his first minutes in several months against Irvine earlier in December.

He added: “Scott Simmons came back for the Irvine game he played 50 minutes and it was his hand that he broke before, and it became really swollen afterwards.

“We decided against risking it against Kilmarnock, just to give him a couple of weeks rest so that he can come back fully fit in the new year.”