A History Lesson As I Look At How We Got Here with Stupid-6

OK – cards on the table from the start. I dubbed the notion of six franchised Super Clubs operating as the top flight of the Scottish club game STUPID-6, and until the day the whole shebang collapses under the weight of its own presumption, I shall continue to call it this. Stupid-6 is a disaster waiting to happen for Scottish Rugby.

 

What exxactly does the Lesser-Spotted Johnson do?

And it is all down to one thing – the incompetence of the Ayatollah and the “suits” inside Murrayfield. Now, I have no quibble with the job Ayatollah Dodson in sorting-out the SRU's finances and I believe he and Dom McKay have done a good job on the commercial side of things. But, for me, they and that total waste of oxygen: The Lesser-Spotted Johnson, have been less than capable when it comes to actually running the playing side of the game. That lack of capability being further emphasised by a Council of club representatives who, led by 'Lance Corporal Jones' - the incumbent President, have performed fairly woefully.

I return yet again to my principal bone of contention regarding Stupid-6: with the caveat - there has been argument about how we set-up the top level of the club game almost since the leagues were introduced in 1973 – there has NEVER until the LSJ apparently dreamed it up, been a suggestion that that top domestic league was there to prepare players for the professional game.

Therefore – Stupid-6 was dreamed-up on a false premise.

I can accept the notion, brilliantly espoused by a fellow rugby-writing hack as: “You put the ten Premiership clubs into a room, and they will go in with 20 different stances. If you left them there long-enough, as a sort of Papal Conclave, they would probably, in the end, come out with a common, agreed position – but, before they had got out of the car park, Hawick would break ranks with yet another position.”

It's the Scottish way – God gave us the English as neighbours so we had a Common Enemy and would hopefully stop fighting among ourselves. Therefore, given our liking for conflict, the SRU, as they had to, did their job and came-up with a plan – Stupid-6. OK, they did their job, such a pity it was such a wrong and unworkable plan they came up with.

Then, having devised this great plan, they totally fuck with it when it came to actually allocating the franchises. The SRU assured us: “There will not be more than two franchises within a single Region;” then they put two within 600 metres of each other, with a third just across the city – and no franchises north of the River Forth.

I could – yet again – list umpteen ways it is wrong, but, I have covered these enough in the past. Back to reality, and the history of the game.

FOOTBALL as we know it began as a sanitised version of the traditional mass-participation street football matches such as the Jedburgh Ba Game. The masters at the English public schools devised football games as a means of helping their young charges run off excess energies, with each school: Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, Winchester, Rugby etc having their own individual rules.

The Cambridge Rules - necessary legislation

When their young gentlemen went up to Oxbridge, they needed a mutually-agreeable set of rules, hence the “Cambridge Rules” were devised. Initially there were some mutual Laws but in short order their came a divergence, with some opting for pure football – where the ball was mainly propelled by the foot, and Rugby's unique handling code. The young former public school chaps then graduate and took their form of football out to a wider audience, again, mostly fellow middle-class chaps.

It would be fair to say, football was then mainly taken-up by the working classes, while, apart from in small pockets such as South Wales, the West of England and the South of Scotland, Rugby remained a largely middle-class sport. Football, therefore, embraced professionalism far-sooner than Rugby did; advocates for the handling game perhaps scared shitless by the furore when they carelessly allowed some northern oiks to play, and they sought “broken-time” payments for having to miss a shift at t' mill to play.

By adopting professionalism from an early point in the game's evolution, football came-up with a progressive recruiting scheme, which in Scotland went something like: schools football – youth football – junior football – senior club football – selection for the Scottish League XI – picked for the full Scotland team.

Then, around 50 to 40 years ago, subtle changes took place and the senior club sides began to cherry-pick the best school-boy and youth players, by-passing the juniors, which then became a fall-back option for those who couldn't cut it in the senior game.

At around the same time, the Scottish League XI began to lose its glitter to the national Under-23, then Under-21 teams and the SFA began to take talent identification seriously, with national sides at Under-16/17/18/19 and Under-20 levels. Basically, if you hadn't been spotted by the time you were 16, you would never make it professionally, and would need to find your own level lower down, or stop playing.

Rugby stumbled along for a time, any leagues were unofficial, few of the top clubs outwith the Borders were “open”, in Edinburgh for instance, you had Wanderers as the only one of the city's top sides which was open to all – Heriot's, Watsonians, Stewart's College FP, Royal High School FP, Melville College FP and Boroughmuir FP all, by those final two letters, signified, you had to have attended, or taught-at those seats of education to play for that club – Academicals after the city name demonstrated you had an association with the Edinburgh Academy. Fair play to 'Muir, by the way, as far as I can recall, they were the first to go open.

In Glasgow, only West of Scotland was open, the FP tag hung over Glasgow and Hillhead High Schools, the Academical one over the Glasgow and Kelvinside Academies' former pupils. The same situation occurred in Aberdeen and Dundee.

This all helped Murrayfield on international day obtain a description which I think some in the posh seats still rather enjoy today: “The biggest old school reunion on the planet.”

Of course, it therefore helped your rugby career if you went to the “right” school, and from there to the right club. As I have pointed-out before, Heriot's, Boroughmuir, Hawick, Melrose and Watsonians were all in the original 1973 top flight, as, through Glasgow HSFP and Glasgow Academicals was Glasgow Hawks – 45 years on they are still in the top flight.

 The late Nirn MacEwan - spotted via Inter-District Rugby

But, unlike in football, in rugby, particularly if you were based outside the two biggest cities, you didn't have to join the right club to advance your playing career. The SRU came up with a sorting-out level, between the club and international games – the Inter-District Championship: Edinburgh v Exiles v Glasgow v North and Midlands v The South. With this, players from small, unfashionable clubs such as Jimmy Greenwood from Perthshire Academicals, Davie Rollo from Howe of Fife, Ronnie Glasgow from Dunfermline and Nairn MacEwan from Highland, or with a relatively unfashionable English or Welsh club, could demonstrate their class and be capped.

As was Dave Rollo

Inevitably, however, with the advent of professionalism, rugby has started to “ape” football when it comes to youth development. Kids are “on the pathway” at aged 14, progressing via Under-16/17/18 and Under-19 to a place in the four regional Academies, then, hopefully to the Under-20 team.

From there, the best will be guided to one or other of the two full-time professional sides, or to the Scotland Sevens squad, while others will fail to make the cut and have to find their level in the club game.

Now, as I, and several other long-standing club-men have pointed-out, there is still a call in Scottish Rugby for some sort of District set-up, above club level - whereby the best players can have a chance to have a go at each other and the Murrayfield men could assess which, if any, club players might be able to make the transition from part-time club player to full-time professional.

While not ideal, Stupid-6 as originally conceived, had at least of chance of doing this. But, with the way they messed it up, the three franchises in Edinburgh for instance, the SRU has demonstrated, it was never about player development, it was all about money – the six franchises which they thought had the best chance of saving their arses, by paying for the additional layer of playing development the SRU feels the game needs – but which they have been unwilling or unable to fund.

The players we will see in Stupid-6 will come from two streams: those Academy players who were not considered good enough to be offered full-time contracts – for them, Stupid-6 will be the last-chance saloon; and those who fell-off the talent conveyor belt at an earlier age and were perhaps slower developers.

These two types of players could develop at club level, before a period of hot-housing with the Districts, where the two full-time sides could see them in a more-professional environment. But, since the District sides were helping the pro teams, the pro teams, ie Murrayfield, should be paying, not some clubs.

Bay of Plenty take the field against Otago in the Mitre 10 Cup, a competition we might do well to copy in Scotland 

We ought to be looking at putting the best club players and those Academy players who still have a bit of convincing to do into competitions such as the proposed Welsh Under-23 Regional sides, or the Mitre 10 Cup competition in New Zealand. However, if we are not going to do this, then Stupid-6 might, if properly run, fill the gap.

It is unlikely to do this, however, when you have unacceptable decisions such as putting three of the six franchises in Edinburgh – that is the principal nonsense among one or two nonsenses.

This week, Neil Meikle, Heriot's Director of Rugby made his case for Stupid-6 in an article in the excellent The Offside Line. Good piece of work Barney by the way. I have myself, been trying, so-far unsuccessfully, to do a similar piece with Ayr's Billy McHarg, which we will hopefully manage when Billy returns from a short break – meanwhile, in my next blog, I will give my take on Meikle's case. Watch this space.