Congratulations is due to Hamish Bain who becomes a fully professional player after signing terms with Federale 1 team Stade Nicois.
As part of Scottish Rugby’s performance partnership, six players will be made available to the French team currently plying their trade in the third tier.
On the move, Hamish said:
“I’m really excited to get stuck in at Stade Nicois. I know that the forwards in France are really physical so hopefully training and playing against them will help to develop my game. I think it will be quite difficult learning the language and learning all the lineout calls in French but I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
As long term and avid user of Coach Logic, we're delighted to see Hamish’s hard-work getting the recognition it deserves.
While we at Coach Logic would never take full credit for his development - Hamish was a talented basketballer in Edinburgh and thrived at school rugby with first Portobello High School and then George Watson’s College – before his Scotland U20 call up, his utilisation of the platform has been particularly impressive.
In the 2017/18 season when Hamish was playing at the Currie Chieftains, he was assigned the role of Lineout Leader by Head Coach Ben Cairns, despite his relative inexperience and still being just twenty years old.
During the season Hamish, Stephen Ainslie and Vincent Wright created clips mainly, but not entirely, focused on lineouts.
An example of a clip created by Hamish:
To give a little more context to some of the clips being created, there was one clear example from earlier in the season that had a profound effect on both the Chieftains and Hamish's own fortunes.
From reviewing footage of an opposition game between two teams in the league, namely Heriot's RFC and Melrose RFC, Hamish identified that Heriot's often compete on their own line in lineouts.
Despite having reviewed this clip and made the observation on the 26th February, when the Chieftains vs. Heriot's match came along in early March, Hamish made a lineout call on the opposition's line that Heriot's turned over.
When reviewing this decision post-match, Hamish admitted it was a poor call, especially so given that he had already reviewed and fed back how Heriot's approach defending lineouts on their own line.
It was then suggested by Hamish himself, that delegating some responsibility and taking a more collaborative approach, by bringing in fellow second-rower Vince would be of benefit to the side for the playoffs.
As you can see there were some hard lessons learned along the way which goes to show being a club leader is never smooth sailing.
In total from the season just gone (where it should be noted that Hamish didn’t play every game, mainly in part to representative honours) he watched over 24 hours of video footage, created 65 clips for discussion and posted 396 replies.
From a players’ perspective this was only second behind Jamie Forbes, who successfully made it into our top ten users.
Recent Edinburgh Rugby recruit Luke Crosbie was also included in the Chieftains’ top ten users for creating clips, tending to favour creating clips of his massive hits and barnstorming runs from the backrow.
When we asked Hamish how Coach Logic had helped him, he said:
"Coach logic has been a great analysis tool for me because it helped me develop certain areas of my game with the use of video and discussion between other players. When doing analysis on other teams lineouts, myself and team mates/coaches could communicate easily what we saw and how we would play against it, so when it came to game time decisions were made before the whistle even went due to our knowledge of their set ups. It also allows everyone to be on the same page.”
Everyone at Coach Logic would like to wish Hamish well on his next playing adventure.
The professional environment is seemingly more competitive than ever but if Hamish’s work ethic, shown by his behind-the-scenes work using Coach Logic, is anything to go by he will give himself a good crack at climbing the ladder of professional rugby.
