I NEARLY choked on my porridge this morning, as I browsed the Herald's online pages. For there was a piece by Lewis Stuart, on the opening, on Thursday, of the new BT SRU Academy West site, at Broadwood Stadium, Cumbernauld. The story was illustrated by a picture of our esteemed Director of Rugby, Scott Johnson.
Scott Johnson - who told him we had a Premiership
The big shock for me was the content, Scott wasn't speaking directly about the new facility, but, about the Murrayfield blazers' determination to big up the BT Premiership. Jings, crivvens, help ma Boab, this was news to me. I didn't know Scott had realised we had a BT Premiership, he has certainly appeared far from clued-up on that competition, any time I have spoken to him about it - alright, the twice.
He suggested that Murrayfield was in active talks with the Premiership clubs about setting-up the fabled semi-professional league, which has been a sort of Loch Ness Monster in Scottish rugby these past few years.
I, however, am not holding my breath for an early conclusion to these talks, because, as ever, self-interest will come into play. As I understand it, Murrayfield would like this to be an eight-strong league. Which brings us back to a simple question - which eight clubs?
If we take recent form - by looking at the last four seasons of the BT Premiership (including this season, which has still to be completed via the play-offs), we find there is indeed a Top Eight Clubs:
Ayr - 1st - 3rd - 3rd - 1st
Melrose - 6th - 1st - 2nd - 4th
Heriot's - 7th - 4th - 1st - 2nd
Gala - 2nd - 2nd - 5th - 9th
Currie - 8th - 7th - 4th - 3rd
Glasgow Hawks - 9th - 5th - 6th - 6th
Hawick - 9th - 6th - 6th - 7th
Stirling County - 4th - 8th - 9th - 8th
(These positions are shown, left to right, from season 2012-13 to 2015-16)
Boroughmuir are a close ninth, having finished 9th - 9th - 8th - 5th over these four seasons.
So, if the SRU is to go on recent league form, the choice of the inaugural top eight will come from these nine clubs. However, this will surely not go down well with those historically "big" clubs who would be set to miss out. I can see a lot of sound and fury coming from the south-eastern quadrant of Scotland, as clubs which have over the years developed a sense of entitlement to be at the top table miss out.
IF the SRU goes down the route of semi-professional clubs, there will have to be some financial support from the Union over the first few seasons, while the clubs develop the necessary professional management systems that will be required.
As one leading official of one of the clubs which will certainly be involved, when the semi-pro league kicks-off told me: "When you are an amateur organisation, you rely heavily on your volunteers, the guys who do the menial jobs: man the car parks and gates, steward, sell the programmes and so on.
"When you go professional, you start paying the players more than even generous expenses, but, you cannot in all honesty pay them, and not the guys whose labours make it possible for the players to earn. Sure, you will still be able to get volunteer stewards and match-day staff, but they cannot be relied upon to keep things going.
"Your costs base goes up, so, you have to sell more advertising boards and programme ads, you cannot simply slip-in a fresh team sheet to your programme. This means extra work Monday-to-Friday, which has to be paid for.
"If you are going professional, you have to attract more paying customers, so, you have to upgrade your facilities, more seats, concrete hard-standing, better floodlights, better facilities for you bar stewards in the press - that costs. Better fitness facilities for the players.
"It is not merely the players who will have to be paid - coaches, physios and support staff, their costs will rise. We have heard the SRU might initially put-in up to £1 million per year to the semi-professional clubs; that is just over £125,000 per club, per year.
"You are looking at a minimum of 35 players, three or four coaching staff, a couple of physios, a retainer for your club doctor, then you have at least one, perhaps two full-time administration staff - you will be having to pay up to 50 people - that averages out to £2500 per person per year.
"It's a drop in the ocean on what it will cost each club.
"Then there may be some long-standing sponsors, who are quite happy to financially support a local club doing well; call me a cynic if you like, but, I can see some of these solid supporters of Scottish rugby telling their clubs: "what do you need my sponsorship for, you are getting all that cash from the SRU now"".
And that's before we get to the operating standards we might expect from the elite clubs. It has been suggested, the elite semi-professional clubs will be required to have proper development programmes in place for young players, they will be asked to initiate partnership schemes with schools, develop the women's game - all additional costs to be borne.
A few of the clubs will initially struggle to put these schemes in place. This will be another burden on the funding package.
Then there is the elephant in the room - the British and Irish Cup. No Premiership clubs have been entered into this Tier Two competition over the past two seasons. Even when Scottish clubs were entered, they did not receive the same support from the Union as the English, Irish and Welsh clubs they were asked to compete against - and it showed.
The semi-pro league is supposed to help speed and expedite the transfer of promising youngsters into full-time Edinburgh and Glasgow professionals, and thus, potential Scotland caps. For this to work, they will need to be exposed to the higher-quality rugby of the B&I Cup.
A lot of things have to be sorted out, before the semi-professional league is up and running. It is time the talking stopped and some action was seen.
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