You're Wrong Grantland - Beating England Matters

FOR, when the one great scorer comes

to mark against your name

he writes not that you won or lost

but how you played the game.

 Grantland Rice

I think we are all familiar with Grantland Rice's little bit of sporting doggerel. Less-familiar is Max Boyce's wee addendum:

So long as you beat England

Kind of sums-up how we all feel about the people God gave us as neighbours, to offset the many riches he or she endowed on the top one-third of that wee island off the coast of Northern Europe. Individually, the English are fine people, collectively, particularly when it comes to politics or their sports media – what is there to like?

So, this afternoon, we await their arrival at Murrayfield. England expects – to win, but, they know they face a tough 80 minutes or so. I have been paying attention to the Calcutta Cup since the days of Ken Scotland, Gordon Waddell, Hughie McLeod, Hamish Kemp, Jimmy Greenwood and Adam Robson on one side; with Jeff Butterfield, Peter Jackson, Eric Evans, Marques and Currie and Ned Ashcroft on the other. Victories in the Calcutta Cup have never, even during that period in the 1970s and 1980s when we generally held the whip hand – been easily achieved.

Today, England, driven on by the most-myopic media in the world, Expects in spades, and we have maybe become perhaps too-accepting of living off crumbs. So when we come up with results such as last night's 24-17 win in the Under-20s game, at Myreside, we do well to remember the sainted words of Allan Wells, as he completed his Moscow victory lap in 1980, and: “Keep the heid, keep the heid.”

Allan Wells dong one of the hardest things for a winning Scot - keeping the heid

Unexpected victories such as the boys pulled-off last night do tend to see us getting carried away.

For me, the great thing, apart from the unexpected outcome – I hold my hand up, following heavy defeats to Wales and France, I fancied damage limitation would be our tactic last night – was the fact, the bulk of the starting XV play their rugby in that bastard child of Murrayfield, that grade of rugby to be raged against by the Murrayfield Ayatollahs – the BT Premiership.

Robbie Smith (Captain) (Ayr), Jamie Hodgson (Watsonians); Martin Hughes (Heriot's), Guy Graham (Hawick), Ross Thompson, Kyle Rowe (both Glasgow Hawks), Stafford McDowall (Ayr), Rory McMichael (Glasgow Hawks) and Paddy Dewhurst (Ayr) of the starting XV, plus replacements Rory Darge (Melrose), Kaleem Barreto (Marr) and Logan Trotter (Stirling County) play their Saturday rugby in the BT Premiership, while props Shaun Gunn and Finlay Richardson and replacement prop Murphy Walker play in the next league down, National League one; Gunn and Richardson for Edinburgh Accies, Walker for Dundee HSFP.

The fact, 15 of the 23-man pool play their rugby at club level in Scotland rather blows a large hole in the SRU's ludicrous statement: “The BT Premiership is not fit for purpose.” While the much-vaunted English team members are working full-time in the various academies, but, mainly playing their rugby against their contemporaries from similar academies – the bulk of the Scottish squad are training full-time with the main Glasgow and Edinburgh squads, but, on a Saturday turning-out against seasoned adults with their clubs – many of whom have been over the Performance Pathway – Academy route before them, but, for various reasons didn't make the cut to full-time professional contracts.

Of course, as you might well be tired of reading on here, Murrayfield never has, and I suspect never will spell-out to us exactly what they think the purpose of the Premiership is; because I don't think they know themselves. This lack of knowledge, I put down to a total lack of interest in a grade of rugby which they cannot totally control – hence their interest in Super Six, with its in-built element of Murrayfield oversight and management.

Craig Watson's great picture captures the joy on the face of skipper Robbie Smith and the Scottosh Under-20 team after last night's marvellous win over England at Myreside

Maybe, just maybe, the grounding the likes of skipper Smith and his men have been getting from playing in the Premiership helped bring-out the resolve which saw Scotland turn around a 7-17 half-time deficit to final victory.

Certainly in some of the most-successful leagues in world sport – the Italian, Spanish and German football leagues, the NHL and MLB in North America, there is a history of young players being farmed-out from their large parent club, to smaller, minor league clubs, to gain experience.

Young Canadian ice hockey players leave college, go into the NHL draft and are perhaps taken-on by Edmonton Oilers, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs or major American franchises like the Boston Bruins, or the Detroit Red Wings, but are farmed-out to teams in leagues such as the Ontario Hockey League, to learn their trade. If they thrive, they go into “the Big Show”, if they don't, they end up in Europe or around the world.

The same thing happens in baseball – where young guns have to spend the obligatory year or two playing in Hicksville, Kansas, or somewhere deep in the heart of Texas, learning their trade and getting ready for the call to “The Show”.

Maybe, just maybe, if, instead of shutting-down the Premiership in favour of a smaller league, in which the clubs will apparently play fewer games, the SRU was to seriously sit down with the clubs, find out what the clubs want, and put-in the cash, we would see more young Scots coming through.

 Dodson and Co would do well to heed the wisdom of Bill Lothian - the Laird o' Leith

Scottish Rugby works as a pyramid, but, as the learned Bill Lothian, who has seen more Scottish rugby games than Dodson and Co ever could, sagely remarked last week – the broader the base of a pyramid, the stronger it is. Shortening the base of the pyramid will not help us make wins such as last night's come along more often.

With Super Six replacing the ten-club Premiership, the SRU is seeking to shorten that level of the pyramid. And, with their even-more-ludicrous call for: “fewer, stronger clubs” below that, they risk seriously under-mining the whole damned edifice.

Scottish Rugby aint broke, and the fix you are needlessly trying to apply Mr Dodson is the wrong one.