2001 - A Crowd Estimate

MANY thanks to my old mate Roddy Forsyth, for the above line, which I have shamelessly borrowed from his Daily Telegraph report on Scotland's 3-1 Carling Nations Cup win over the Welsh, in Dublin on Wednesday night.

The ever-sharp Roddy got the idea from the fact 'Also Sprake Zarathustra' or the theme from 2001 - A Space Odyssey was playing as the teams took the park in an Aviva Stadium which looked like a green-painted Ibrox Park in the early 1980s: you recall the joke - they had discovered a design fault, the seats faced the pitch; as the Bears voted with their feet and refused to turn-up to watch a Rangers team which could barely win a corner.

At least two batallions of the Tartan Army made it through the volcanic ash to Dublin, with a third batallion due there for Sunday's Carling show-down with the Republic. (the Tartan Army v the Green Army, in Dublin - that has to be a wet dream for the Guinness marketing department).

I believe this quadrangular tournament can be a good thing, if they get the format and marketing correct. I don't think it can merit using the really big stadia - the Aviva, the three big Glasgow grounds or the Millennium Stadium and, for sure, no British tournament can work properly unless the Celtic Fringes get a chance to have a kick at "the Common Enemy" - you know, Them, Ingerlund.

The timing is also wrong, at the end of the ever-stretching domestic season, we are all footballed out. The Nations Cup could be "a Gunnell" - not pretty, but it can run, but I feel it needs a make-over.

Still, good to see the Scots scoring goals, albeit, as was the case against Norther Ireland in February, at the expense of a poor Welsh side.

MICHAEL Fry, not a journalist I have ever thought of as a fitba man, has penned a very interesting piece in this morning's Scotsman about the Scottish Government's proposals for a crack-down on sectarian behaviour at football matches.

Fry makes some good points, which I hope our MSP's take on board. He also reitterates a thought which I have had myself. After the Old Firm Scottish Cup replay, the UEFA fine on Rangers, the Hearts v Celtic game and the BBC documentary of recent weeks, a band-wagon is rolling to the effect: "something must be done". If there is one thing politicians hate it is a band-wagon rolling without them on board, so they are all scrabbling to put in their pennyworth.

"El Chooky" Salmond wants legislation against sectarianism on the statute book before the new season, which kicks-off in about eight weeks. Our glorious leader has I fear forgotten - law passed in a hurry is generally bad law.

Scotland is still, in many ways a tribal society, particularly in West-Central Scotland. The "Proddies" hate the "Papes", both hate the "Pakis" - heck, in some parts of Ayrshire, Fife and the Lothians, marrying someone from the neighbouring village is still seen as founding "a mixed marriage". In a lot of Scotland, a white girl seen with a black boy is risking extreme censure - we can still be a narrow-minded wee nation, look how the shit hit the fan this week when the General Assembly debated gay ministers.

We've got a lot of problems still, in this 11th year of the third millennium - but nothing gets us more-aereated than the followers of two football teams fighting a (mainly verbal - let's be honest) battle about religion and politics in Northern Ireland. I accept there is some low-level copy-cat behaviour around some other clubs, but the main problem concerns just two teams, whose management will do as little as they can get away with in sorting-out their followers - since sectarianism sells.

We don't need fresh legislation - all it takes is for the SPL and the SFA to call-in the chairmen and chief executives of the two (three if we include Hearts) clubs and tell them: "Our match delegates will be listening, just one instance of offensive chanting at your matches and you will be docked however many points you win in that game." The football authorities should also list what are "offensive" songs and chants - starting with any of the Irish political and religious "folk songs" - these have hee-haw to do with Scottish football.

The clubs then have to crack-down, starting with their official supporters clubs, warning them "We are listening, we will pin-point where the singing and chanting is coming from, and if it's from an area where your members are, no tickets".

By this method, the decent fans would self-police and in very short order the lunatics who were unwilling to change would be chased from our game. What happened thereafter is a government problem, but football could at least say "We've cleaned-up our mess, now you clean-up yours". Simples.

SO Jack Warner and yon big Arab frae Qatar are allegedly on the take - haud me back, ah never kent.

Aye right - when, in one of the most-gloriously indiscreet interviews in the history of sport, back in 2007, John McBeth made a few pertenent observations about some of the people he was set to deal with as the new British vice-president of FIFA, his reward was to be roundly abused by a highly-affronted Mr Warner, Sepp Blatter and the others of FIFA's elite. McBeth, hardly the epitome of charismatic leadership, but for all that a true football man whose dedication to Clyde was most-laudable, was suddenly declared unsuitable for the corridors of power in Zurich, he was dropped like a big stone and England's Geoff Thompson almost fell over his own feet in his haste to get onboard the Zurich gravy train.

McBeth went as far as he legally could in sign-posting Warner as a crook, but no, to Thompson and the FA he was one of the first gentlemen of football. Fast forward four years, Warner in the interim having at the very least lied to the English about his voting intentions towards the 2018 World Cup and when another of the FIFA blazers, the wonderfully-named Chuck Blazer, blows the whistle on him, the FA and the English football press are on Warner's trail with the zest and enthusiasm of the Beaufort Hunt's foxhounds.

As he sits in retirement in his Glasgow home, John McBeth can at least say "Aye well, ah telt ye".

Well Done Wagga

SO Leinster have won the Heineken Cup - well done to the Dublin lads, and particularly well done "Big Wagga" aka Nathan Hines. At his advanced age and with Richie Gray growing in stature with every international, I would not be surprised were the big Australian to announce his retirement from international rugby as soon as Scotland exit the World Cup.

He has always been an iconic figure, whether playing in Scotland, France or Ireland and on the day when fly half Jonathan Sexton wrote his name all over the match, how typical of Wagge to gate-crash with that crucial try for Leinster.

THE lack of self-awareness within Murrayfield is amazing. Perhaps they have been taking spin-doctoring lessons from Alastair Campbell - a man whose contribution to Rugby Union as press officer for the 2005 Lions was, well shite, says it all really.

The SRU media department put-out a press release following Mark Bennett's decision to join the Clermont Auvergne Academy, which gave the impression he had somehow emerged from a laboratory deep within Murrayfield, dedicated to producing Scottish internationals.

The gist of the release was how Bennett had come through the SRU's Pathway programme and the Scottish Age Group system and what a succcess this had been. No mention of the hard work of guys such as Harry Reilly, Morton Houston and Steve Miller - not forgetting Mark's dad, at Cumnock. Ignore the contribution of Jock Craig, Kenny Murray and the team at Ayr, who backed this brilliant youngster's promise by playing him in the first team all season - no, it was all Murrayfield's doing. Aye Right.

Maybe, if Murrayfield would give the professional clubs a bit more leeway and make them totems for the Districts, if they would put a bit more into the top of the club game, we would not be losing outstanding young talent such as Mark to foreign climes. Certainly, if I was a promising young Scot, having seen what has happened to the likes of Alex Blair, I would think twice about turning professional in Scotland.

ONE player who has turned full-time this week is Ayr prop Gordon Reid, and I had to laugh at the strap line over the story in The Scotsman. This referred to Reid as "a late developer". He's 24 and he's a loose-head prop. At that age he's barely out of nappies; but, he's packed a lot of First Division experience into his short career and, with Chunk maybe thinking about quitting after the World Cup - Reidy is the right age to maybe kick-on to add a full cap to his Club XV ones. The fight for the number one jersey at Glasgow in the new season will be keen.

Magnificent Sevens

I AM in my seventh decade of involvement in rugby. I was hooked by Arthur Smith's try in the win over Wales which terminated our terrible run of defeats; Jimmy Greenwood playing on with a shattered shoulder against Ireland showed me the courage it takes to play internationally; I wanted to be Ken Scotland; I played against Gordon Brown, Al McHarg and Gordon Strachan at school; I witnessed "the greatest conversion since St Paul", roared Alan Lawson home with a lot less detachment than did his father-in-law; I have caroused with Gavin Hastings, John Jeffery and Co - marvelled at Jonah Lomu; shouted "Gerritrightupyouse" and Will Carling and assorted white-shirted farts; come to realise Brian Moore isn't Satan incarnate and met living legends such as Barry John, Gareth Edwards, Mike Gibson and Willie John McBride.

Now, as I contemplate retirement, I fear rugby is going to hell in a handcart - unless we address such fundamentals as a law book which has become unworkable, a strain of laissez faire refereeing which is threatening the game as a spectacle and a consciousness in the professional game which will, unless curbed, take us down the dark road which football has followed.

Rugby, the game, remains great, but crisis time is fast approaching and I fear we do not have the minds within the game to divert rugby away from potential disaster.

I thought it was only in Scotland that we had given the inmates the keys to the asylum - when I survey the self-serving time-servers in so many leading Murrayfield roles. Then I watch the mess the English are making of appointing a Performance Director and realise - we are not alone.

But, it is not all doom and gloom.

Take Rugby Sevens becoming an Olympic sport from 2016. This single action could well be the making of the game. However, the trick, which the IRB will require to pull-off, and here I must say I doubt if they have the savvy to do it, is to make Sevens a popular world-wide Olympic sport, without it overwhelming the true 15-a-side game. Cricket is struggling to maintain the integrity of five-day Test cricket as the true game, in the face of Twenty20 and the mega-rich Indian League. Rugby could face the same dilmema in respect of Sevens.

But, now it is an Olympic sport, on top of its popularity in the Commonwealth Games, Sevens may well be rugby's future. After all, it shows-off the game's better points, the athleticism of the strike runners, the contest for possession at the break-down, the tackling, the aerial ballet at the touch lines, without some of the core ingredients so-beloved of the true believers, but which turn-off the non-believers.

That's why all the concerns about funding the Scotland Sevens squad have to be addressed - this is the game's future and we have to be involved. But, can the SRU come up with sensible, workable solutions? That's the question.

AS I wrote above, I've got a lot of time for Brian Moore - just as I had a lot of time for Jimmy Hill - which perhaps makes me unique in Scotland. 'Pit Bull' is one of the more-sensible sporting commentators around today and always worth reading.

His Monday take on Richard Cockerill, the Leicester coach, who is apparently England's answer to Neil Lennon, except without the red-hair and with added obnoxious qualities was a masterly analysis - would that some of my friends in the Scottish Football Writing fraternity could be as incisive and insightful (rather than inciting) on little Lennie.

Time To Cull The Rupert

FOR the benefit of those readers who never served Queen and Country - a "Rupert" is a public school-educated officer in a Scottish regiment. These chaps, quite often Anglo-Scots attracted amazing degrees of loyalty from their "Jocks", who would, so the "Ruperts" would tell ladies at cocktail parties in English shires, London salons and the shooting lodges of Perthshire: "follow me anywhere".

At the same time, in the public bars of Glasgow and in assorted farming and mining villages or in the textile towns of the Borders, the self-same Jocks were assuring their civvie pals: they had only followed the "Ruperts" out of some morbid fascination and to discover which particular heap of shite they would be required to fight their way out off.

As I survey the state of Scottish rugby in 2011, I sometimes ask myself - with the contraction of our army, have the "Ruperts" all signed-up for the SRU rather than the HLI, KOSB and so-forth?

There are some good guys at Murrayfield - just not many and not enough. I thought perhaps it was maybe simply the natural disdain of the journalist for the people we are dealing with, until I bought Ian McGeechan's autobiography 'Lion Man' and virtually read it in a single sitting.

'Geech' has been there, done that, got the t-shirt, the DVD, the medals, the knighthood. One wonders what this Yorkshire-born son of an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander from Govan might have made of the English rugby team.

Considering, on the back of a year or two in Corstorphine as a primary school boy, Clive Woodward won England a World Cup - what might McGeechan's mix of Govan gallusness and Yorkshire bloody-mindedness have done for the world's most-popular sporting villains?

What might McGeechan have made of a Scottish football team - a Leeds upbringing on top of Govan genes - that's one potent mix. He did a not-bad job on Scottish rugby and the McGeechan-Telfer coaching team would, I warrant, give even Clough and Taylor or Shankly and Paisley a run for their money.

Reading 'Lion Man' one thing struck me - he has the scars to remind him - but he is clearly no fan of the way Murrayfield has handled professional rugby.

McGeechan moved on in disgust. Telfer was happy to get out and into retirement. Andy Irvine has happily gone off to concentrate on the Lions. Peter Brown was rejected, ditto Findlay Calder. John Jeffery is largely side-lined, similarly Gavin Hastings. Jim Aitken and David Sole they don't let inside the door. David Leslie's health probably isn't up to the demands which would be asked. That's an impressive pile of side-lined knowledge and talent.

Ian McLauchlan, hopefully, has one year left in which to try to sort out a real mess - if wee Beastie cannot put things right - I shudder and fear for the future.

We simply MUST sort-out Murrayfield, quickly. Let's cull the Ruperts - NOW.

Talk To Them - Now

WELL done London Scottish, on gaining promotion to the English Championship - the level below the English Premiership. Back in the day, a strong Scottish meant a strong Scottish and I trust my old mate Al McHarg's head is getting back to normal this morning, after a wee swally in celebration.

Now, however, Scottish's problems will begin, not least because, in the professional game in England, there is a rule which decrees that a certain percentage of a team's squad must be "England-qualified". This might compromise the potential which Scottish's promotion offers Scottish rugby for having additional professional players, playing in British rugby. I dare say, though, there will be a sufficiently-high number of competent Scottish employment law-specialist lawyers in the City of London, able to drive a horse and cart through that ruling, as being racially-aggravated or something.

Another potential fly in the ointment is the fact that Scottish and the SRU haven't always, in spite of the club having sent north an impressive number of Scottish internationalists and SRU "blazers", seen eye-to-eye politically. What's good for Scottish hasn't always been good for the SRU and vice versa.

But, and I'm not holding my breath given the paucity of intellectual giants within Murrayfield, IF Richmond and Murrayfield could find common purpose - it would be win-win for Scottish rugby.

I SEE Chris Cusiter is off to Australia for a summer, to get match-sharp before the World Cup. We may be light in other areas, but Scotland has enviable strength-in-depth at the base of the scrum, with Chris, Mike Blair and Rory Lawson and if necessary Greig Laidlaw, who has developed into a terrific all-purpose half-back. However, I feel, with a fully-fit Cusiter snapping at the pack's heels, we would be better-off than with any of his competitors, fine players though they are.

Chris has had a good break from playing, I hope he goes well in New Zealand in the World Cup.

GOOD piece by Ian Morrison on the appointment of Michael Bradley as the new Edinburgh coach in yesterday's Scotland on Sunday. Obviously the SRU cannot take Ian's caps off him, or delete him from the list of internationalists - but I reckon if he isn't already off the Murrayfield Christmas card list, his deletion will not be too-long delayed.

Well said that man.

Mark My Words - This Kid's Good

THE Gospel according to Alan Hansen reads: "You win nothing with kids". Aye right - as Alex Ferguson said as he blooded Beckham, Butt,Giggs, Scholes and Co. But, apparently only at Old Trafford is it possible to bring together bunches of kids and win.

Golden rules for football do not necessarily cross borders to apply in rugby and certainly, because of the fact that rugby is all about possession and to win the forward battle in rugby you need mature bodies - it is fair to say that, in rugby: you win nothing with kids.

However, kids, particularly in the backs, can make rugby more-exciting, particularly if such kids come blessed with that uncoachable element - genuine pace. In a club rugby sense, young Mark Bennett certainly possesses genuine pace. Whether that pace is sufficient for the higher and harsher grounds of the Magner's League, we will start to find out tonight at Royal Dublin Showgrounds.

I must admit, I'd have loved to have seen Mark facing BOD, as God is known in the Emerald Isle, but, that is not to be. I wish the kid well, not that I think he will need good luck or good wishes - this teenager is the real deal.

In fact, with Duncan Weir at stand-off, we might well be seeing the future of Scottish rugby for the first time - factor in the highly-rated Harry Leonard of Boroughmuir and Edinburgh, currently off for six months of intense grooming in New Zealand - as the medium term replacement for Graeme Morrison and there is cause for optimism.

The problem is, the Hansen view seems to hold sway in Scotland. We do tend to be suspicious of kids, even kids with Bennett's potential. Let's be brave, move heaven and earth and keep young Mark with Glasgow - but PLAY him. It's not as if Glasgow will win things;Glasgow and Edinburgh are rapidly becoming finishing schools from which the English and French clubs with bigger budgets will cherrypick their next signings.

Therefore, if Glasgow trust in young Mark, give him game time, as a starter rather than as an impact or clock-running-down substitute, and watch Scotland benefit.

BACK in prehistoric times, when rucking was real and, in fact, you HAD to play the ball with a foot before it could emerge from rucks, I made my club debut, aged 15, as hooker in my club's 2nd XV. I was a good deal smaller than I am today, but still, I was only 15.

I had great protection from a front five of two huge polis, my older brother and a gnarled veteran who hewed coal at the face from Monday to Friday, so I survived, learned the black arts and got a terrific free education in forward play.

In time, as I grew, I played anywhere in the front five and occasionally at number eight. I have always felt I was lucky to have such an easy introduction to the club game, protected as I was by some great colleagues.

My grandson is now 15; he's six foot three and probably weighs as much as I did then, although I was six inches shorter. He has no chance of playing for the same club's 2nd XV. In some ways this is a good thing - on health and safety grounds and I cannot argue that the demands made on a teenaged hooker, operating between two experienced props and with a massive boiler-house pairing behind him are different from those facing a young, slim and still-growing lock, so, we are making progress.

Before he can play even Under-18 rugby, my grandson will have to pass the SRU's strength test; this is a good thing - except, nobody can tell me exactly what the perameters are: what will be asked of him. Come-on SRU, clarify matters. And while they are at it, can someone tell me what the qualifying date is for the various age groups. I think he is, because of his date of birth, eligible for another year at Under-16, but cannot find out for sure. This too needs clarifying.

I HAVE been enjoying myself these past few days, speculating on what may happen to the club game the season after next, 2012-13, when, if the sensible proposals being put before the SRU annual meeting next month are, as they ought to be, carried - we will see the birth of a genuine pyramid system in Scottish rugby.

Being a West of Scotland boy, I am particularly interested in what might happen, if we have - as has been mooted by the Season Structure Working Party (SSWP) just 20 national league teams: ten Premiership teams, ten National League teams; under-pinned by two x ten-club Championship divisions - East and West, with regionalisation below that.

It's how the likes of the West Region will be organised which fascinates me. I can see linear rather than vertical organisation being preferable - a South West Region covering Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway, producing some fierce local derbies and great rugby. Likewise the Glasgow and Renfrewshire clubs could produce some fierce and enjoyable rugby, while Lanarkshire and its environs will also see somecracking local encounters. Far better than region-wide vertical boundaries.

The future seems bright - if the very sensible suggestions of the SSWP go through - but, there's the rub.

Don't Shoot The Messenger

IN MY last post, I was fairly harsh on young Andrew McMenemy, after his poor performance as referee of the Ayr v Currie Premiership A match. Today I wish to congratulate Andrew on being chosen to referee the British & Irish Cup Final between Bristol and Bedford.

I hope he does well; he probably will, having got the bad game out of his system.

I was puzzled on Monday to receive an e-mail from Murrayfield, taking me to task about my comments re Andrew's refereeing. OK, it appears I and most of the crowd, missed a yellow card for a Currie player; but if the referee doesn't make it clear that he is yellow-carding someone, there is a chance it will be missed, when a string of substitutions are being made at the same time.

But, my point in raising this is, rather than the SRU petulantly having a go at a single journalist, whose views on one game they disagree with, shouldn't they be sorting-out their own referees. Scotland's whistlers are well down the international pecking order these days and given the standard of some of the Irish and Welsh guys we have to thole in Magners League games and internationals, if we cannot get guys onto the big games, we've got a problem.

Mind you, Peter Allen probably, single-handedly set back the cause of Scottish refereeing some five years in the Wales v Ireland game - making our problem that bit worse.

GOOD luck Michael Bradley - you're gonna need it, now you've landed the Edinburgh job. Bradley didn't exactly set the heather on fire with Connacht, so it's not as if his appointment has excited the natives in Edinburgh. Could anything excite the natives in the capital?

Interesting suggestion from Ian Morrison in Sunday's Scotland on Sunday, floating the idea of asking the Royal Highland if they might co-operate with the SRU in sticking a rugby pitch onto the main arena at Ingliston as an alternative home for Edinburgh. This plan has real merit and I hope someone takes it further.

JUST a thought on the proposal to make every division below National League One a regional one from next season - if this happens, shouldn't we think of re-introducing inter-district rugby as a means of allowing those players with regional league teams who might have the potential for higher things to show what they can do. Such a competition would I feel become even more significant come 2012/13, when the number of teams playing in truly-national rather than regional leagues decreases again. We have to create and keep open a pathway to the top. In fact, rather than going inter-district, I'd rather go inter-county.

The Counties Championship, which staggered along for a few years in the late eighties, early nineties, largely ignored by Murrayfield, was a terrific competition, killed-off by not quite publicly-admitted distaste from Murrayfield.

Murrayfield - You Have A Problem

IT HAS been said that you have to have half a brain missing to become a referee. Be that as it may, you certainly have to be something of a masochist to put up with the abuse which comes with arbitrating on a rugby match. Refereeing is best left, I feel to retired forwards or scrum halves and putting a whistle to one's lips ought not to be contemplated before one's 30th birthday.

So what are we to make of today's fashion for ever-younger match officials such as Wayne Barnes, New Zealand's favourite Englishman or our own Andrew Macpherson and Andrew McMenemy?

As my alter ego: Socrates MacSporran, has said of football's Willie Collum - a man who even as a teenaged schoolboy wanted to be a football referee - that is surely the ultimate example of a mis-spent childhood. Ditto then for messrs Macpherson and McMenemy.

Young McMenemy was supposed to be in charge of Ayr v Currie on Saturday. He never really was; throughout the 80 minutes this was a free-for-all about to break out and if the players, mostly, listened to his whistle - he can never be said to have been completely in charge.

This was a shame, for Ayr v Currie games are never less than meaty affairs, full-blooded even match-ups, played with no quarter asked nor given, but always in the right spirit.

They need strong, even-handed officials and on these two crucial counts, McMenemy let himself and the game down on Saturday. The most-crucial element in a good referee's arsenal is consistency. Players will always push the boundaries, but, they will accept the referee's censure, provided it is consistently given.

On Saturday, McMenemy was quick to spot and punish Ayr's infringements, but would let Currie off with commiting exactly the same offence. Ayr were repeatedly pinged for infringing at the offside line; if Currie were also, I must have missed it and on a couple of occasions at the breakdown, I am sure Ayr scrum half AJ Macfarlane's pass away went behind the back of a Currie player to stand off Richard McCallum.

I have no complaints about the first two Ayr yellow cards, other than to say, when a player is pushed to retaliate and gets a yellow, it's a poor referee who doesn't also punish the opponent who caused the retaliation.

But the third Ayr yellow card, when replacement winger Cammy Taylor took a right hook to the jaw and got a yellow card for his troubles - on several Ayrshire junior football grounds, sending off a home team player for that would have guaranteed the referee a bed in either Ayr or Crosshouse A&E.

One weel-kent former Ayr and Scotland squad player was so-incensed by the refereeing, he is penning a letter to Murrayfield. Aye, not one for Andrew McMenemy's scrap book.

We Scots wonder why we haven't got a referee on the IRB's elite list - maybe it's because those we have got are shite - and it's time Murrayfield started doing something about it. Get the IRB's top men in, to hold workshops and what not, or to assess game management, but, sort it out, you have a problem.

That said - Currie deserved to win and must be ruing their poor start to the season. If they had started as they had finished, their title would surely have been retained and they have a terrific squad at Malleny Park who will be at the top for a year or two yet.

I would like to say the same about Ayr. They have a marvellous off-field set-up, with president Billy McHarg, Director of Rugby Jock Craig and man-for-all-seasons Norrie Lymburn and Co deserving of the highest praise for their management of the club.

Kenny Murray is one of Scotland's brightest and best young coaches and he has some terrific, still-young and promising talent at his disposal, under-pinned by a youth set-up which is the envy of many.

However, Saturday marked the farewells of Damien Kelly and Glen Tippett, two anitpodean pillars of the club's recent success. I fear that, like Rangers post-John Greig, Celtic post-Billy McNeill and Aberdeen post-Fergie - there will maybe be a slight dip.

Skippy Kelly, in particular, not only for his iconic presence as an on-field rallying point, but also through his unheralded development work round local schools, will be a huge figure to replace. Tippett will still be around in his role with the SRU and he will now have Stuart Fenwick in Kelly's old role. But, the club will need to recruit a big hulking lock to do Skippy's hard yards on the park.

Rumour has it that James Eddie is joining-up to reinforce the back row and he will certainly grind-out the hard yards. Certainly Ayr's qualification for the British & Irish Cup will help their recruitment drive but getting the right guys in is never a given.

Behind the scrum they will surely have to replace Mark Bennett, who is headed for higher things, while a reliable place kicker is another must. It will be interesting to see what Ayr's estimable antipodean recruitment team come up with, to assist in the development of some of their younger players such as Robbie Fergusson and Mark Beckwith.

Glasgow Hawks are also keen to turn the Big Three into a Big Four. Gone are the days when there was a laissez faire attitude to the game at Old Anniesland - next season promises to be a very interesting one for our top clubs and you can guarantee, a lot of hard work will be put in over the summer to guarantee this.

I can hardly wait.