Cotter - More Stein Than Ferguson

JOCK STEIN, a big, somewhat dour Lanarkshire miner turned centre-half, has tended to have been over-shadowed of late by his disciple, Alex Ferguson. However, he made one or two utternaces a lot more profound than: "Football, bloody hell".

 

Take, for instance, the Stein philosophy on management: "It's about making sure the five players who love you have more influence on the team than the five who hate you". Thus sprake a man whose attitude to team-work was influenced by the very real requirement for the entire team to be reading off the same hymn sheet, when they were working hundreds of feet below Lanarkshire in a coal mine.

Big Vern Cotter, more I think a Stein than a Ferguson, needs all 31 of his players to be reading from the same hymn sheet at Twickenham this afternoon. But, before he sends out his chosen XV, he has to decide - does he leave well alone, and dresses the 23 guys he named on Friday, or, does he restore Ross Ford and Jonny Gray to the starting XV, or the match-day 23?

 

How he answers that question, could have a major bearing on whether Scotland's Rugby World Cup journey ends this afternoon, or is extended into the last four, or even the final.

IF, as we sincerely hope it does - #AS One is more than an advertising slogan, then he will be able to sit down with Fraser Brown, Tim Swinson, Kevin Bryce and either Al Strokosh or Josh Strauss and say: "Ok guys, it is all-change after the appeal was upheld, I want Ross and Jonny stripped this afternoon so, you and you will be in the stand and they will be stripped".

 

The players who will be stood-down will accept their fate and Scotland will go out, with the cited two restored, to beat the Aussies.

That is what I think, and hope, will happen.

 

 

 

OK, so Ford and Gray are back, and rightly so. But, World Rugby still has to address the very real fact, their disciplinary systems are in a mess. Indeed, I would go as far as to say, the game has an awful lot of issues to sort-out, which have been ignored in recent years.

 

The question is - does the desire exist to sort-out the way small issues have become big issues?

 

Are we going to see squint feeds ended; the mess that is the break-down sorted-out; are we going to see a fairer deal for the Tier Two and Tier Three nations, something which the governing body has to address, if rugby is to thrive and grow?

 

Is the game, at global level, going to become a true world-wide game, rather than a former Empire game, struggling to make ground in non-post-impreial countries?

 

At this stage, we need strong leadership - I don't think we have it.

 

Finally, having been "torn a new one", by the decision to immediately reinstate Ford and Gray, will Christopher Quinlan QC consider his position. Certainly, given the way he treat Ford and Gray, and his ridiculous decision not to uphold the Finn Russell citing, I feel this Bristol QC's credibility in rugby is shot to pieces.