RHU Amateurs’ captain Gordon Brodie says now is an exciting time to be involved with the club – despite the fact there hasn’t been any on-field action in nearly four months.

The club are celebrating their 125th anniversary this year but, like most things in the current climate, all the celebrations and fund-raisers they had planned have been put on hold.

Brodie remains optimistic that the DCF Park side will be able to properly mark the occasion later this year, but for now he hailed the committee of the club for keeping things running whilst football takes a back seat.

Helensburgh Advertiser: The Rhu players are itching to get back on the pitchThe Rhu players are itching to get back on the pitch

Speaking to the Advertiser, he said: “We made plans last year for how we were going to celebrate the 125th year, which included this part of the year, but there’s still talks and plans happening in the background so hopefully we’ll have stuff on in the remaining part of the year when we’re allowed to.

“It’s a really exciting time to be part of Rhu.

“It’s sad to see the clubhouse sitting empty just now but the committee we’ve got are brilliant and have been maintaining it, some of the boys were up cutting the grass the other day even though there’s been no games happening.

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“It is a shame to see it like that because there was a lot of big sponsorship that’s gone into the club.”

To no-one’s surprise, Caledonian League officials recently pulled the plug on the 2020-21 league campaign after it became clear there wouldn’t be time to complete a meaningful league season because of the ongoing restrictions.

Rhu managed only one league fixture – a 6-1 win over Rothesay Brandane at the beginning of October – before a ban was imposed on amateur clubs crossing council boundaries to play matches.

That led to the establishment of an informal Argyll and Bute mini-league to keep players’ fitness levels up – and Brodie says he and his troops enjoyed that experience so much they hope to start a similar style tournament when they are given the go ahead.

He explained: “It was good to get the boys going. We had some good away days and kept everyone ticking over, because everyone was missing it.

“Training with no games made it hard to motivate the players, but when we knew we had games coming up the training was good.

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“All the boys were focussed, so getting that wee league was brilliant but there’s been nothing since then.

“We’re hoping to start a wee tournament in place of the Caledonian League being cancelled, which they have said we can do when restrictions are lifted.”

League bosses say they still have hopes of holding a cup tournament of some description before the curtain officially falls on the 2020-21 season, while a date of August 7 has been provisionally pencilled in for the start of the 2021-22 campaign.

Brodie also paid tribute to the two Rhu players who took part in a gruelling fund-raising effort in aid of the Beatson Cancer Charity last month.

Brian Cameron and Jack Gorman joined their friends Andrew Shortt and Brendan Campbell in a challenge to run four miles, every four hours, over 48 hours, on the first weekend of March.

They set themselves a fund-raising target of £800 – but smashed that within days and ended up raising almost £6,600.

Brodie said: “The boys got a load of backing and the club made donations so I think that shows we’re all sticking together.

“It was only two boys from the club that were doing the run, but everyone backed them and it was good to see.

“With lockdown you can’t really see anybody but everyone still has each other’s back.”

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