Taking Back Control Could Take Us Back To A Future

ONCE upon a time, unless it was a “Lions Year”, rugby posts across the land would by now be taken down for their annual painting by mid-May; the balls would be resting in their summer coat of dubbin, ditto the boots, kit would be washed, ironed and put away, to be replaced by cricket whites, golf wear, athletics singlets, swimming trunks or whatever – dependent on the wearer's choice of alternative sport.

 

King George V - told-off by James Aikman-Smith, would Mark Dodson risk doing the same to his great-grand-daughter I wonder

Then, in 1960 the Scottish Rugby Union, those arch-conservatives, the reactionaries, whose all-powerful Secretary, James Aikman-Smith once replied - to his Imperial Majesty George V, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain an Ireland, the overseas Dominions, Protectorates and Colonies, Emperor of India, asking why the Scotland team at Twickenham, unlike the England one they were facing in a Calcutta Cup match, were not identified by numbers: “Because Sire, it is a rugby match, not a cattle market,” - changed the game – by initiating “the Short Tour.”

 

That move, allied to the advent of jet travel, opened the floodgates, which were swept away altogether when Rugby Union went open in 1995. Today, Rugby Union has followed its cousin Association Football down the road towards all-year-round play.

 

This change has signalled the end of the “gentleman amateur,” essentially an English creation, but, one we can accept and understand here in Scotland: the man (or woman) who can play a number of sports to a very high level. Will we ever again I wonder see the likes of Eric Liddell or Ken Jones – rugby internationalists and Olympians; or MJK Smith, who captained England at cricket and also played international rugby for them; or other cricket/rugby double internationalists such as Norman Mair, Ken Scotland and Watsonians' David Bell – to date, the last Scottish double internationalist.

David Bell - the last Scottish duble cricket and rugby internationalist

 

(Embarrassing edit - Jings, crivvens, help ma Boab, I only went and credited the wrong Watsonian with being the last cricket/rugby double internationalist. That honour, as I should have remembered, is with Andrew Ker, not David Bell. Sorry Andrew. And thanks, again, for putting me right Bill Lothian.)

Even Liddell – thanks to the film 'Chariots of Fire', perhaps the epitome of the gentleman amateur, had to put his rugby-playing on hold to give himself the best-possible chance of Olympic athletics glory.

 

Once you let the money genie out of the bottle, there is no way of putting it back – professionalism is a voracious beast when it comes to sport, and feeding that beast does tend to become THE main priority of the guys running any sport.

 

I am old enough to recall when the average club rugby player bought his own kit, shirt, shorts, jock strap, stockings, boots, his kit bag. If he wore a scrum cap he bought it, if he went in for a head band – he supplied the tape himself. He had to pay an annual club membership fee; he bought his own club tie, blazer and sweater, supplied his own track suit and training gear, and had his beer money to put into the kitty for the opposition after the game, while his match fee paid for such minor details as the half-time oranges.

 

These days, clubs provide most of this stuff free – often well down the game's “food chain”. This has meant clubs have had to become more-professional themselves, searching-out and securing sponsorship etc., dreaming up ways of attracting the members to use the club-house more on days other than Saturdays, to keep the cash coming in which pays for so much of match-day operations.

 

Whereas, 40 or 50 years ago, in the “Good Old Days”, having a car would often keep an average player in the team – because you needed four or five cars to transport the XV to an away game, today, increasingly, teams travel together in coaches. Of course, stiffer law enforcement has made this a welcome move. I shudder in hindsight at how we would drive to Glasgow for a game, have two or three pints post-match; drive home to Ayrshire, stopping-off at the Malletsheugh for another couple of pints, there to meet-up with some of the other Ayrshire teams heading home.

 

This might mean a wee detour into Kilmarnock, or Troon, or straight on to Ayr, before eventually heading home – only a total idiot would try that these days.

We have a more-professional attitude right down through the various tiers of the game today. OK, we have maybe lost a lot of the “fun” from the game, but, even at Regional League level, the players are perhaps fitter and more-focussed than we were.

 

If the players are more-professional, perhaps the club officials are not. Today, covering games from the press seats, I still meet many guys I played with and against, although, truth to tell, more often I see the guys I wrote about when I started covering rugby in the 1970s, watching their sons and in some cases grandsons playing, or in positions of power on committees.

 

However, by and large I think their attitude has changed, they now adopt a more-professional approach to their rugby. Certainly, the days mourned by my dear old mate Bill Lothian in a Facebook post the other week when: “Dear old John Law managed to run the entire SRU from one office inside Murrayfield,” are gone for ever.

Mark Dodson - very-well-paid for what he does

 

Today, we have Ayatollah Dodson picking-up his £500,000 pa, or whatever his salary is for doing basically the same job as Bill. But, with that level of wedge coming in, the Ayatollah needs his corps of minions to massage his ego, do his bidding and make him look and feel important.

 

All these minions have to, in turn, show how important they also are, by having minion's minions to do their bidding, but, all these minions have to be paid. So we end up with a situation whereby everyone is sprinting, simply to stand still, thereby generating more hot air to keep the bubble in which they operate expanding.

 

However as we all know, everything has its limits, even the ability of a hot-air generated sports bubble to self-sustain – and when it pops – it will get very messy. I fear we are getting close to bubble-popping time in professional rugby in Scotland, and, I further fear Stupid-6 just might be the weakness which sees the whole thing pop.

And that is why I welcome the motions to be discussed at the AGM in August. I urge everyone to log onto the excellent The Offside Line and read David Barnes's take on it. I reckon the Big Man has, yet again, hit the nail on the head.

 

I have, in previous posts, likened Stupid-6 and Agenda-3 to Brexit. Well, in welcoming the motions for the AGM, I see welcome evidence of the clubs, the backbone of the game, seeking to take back control. That has to be welcomed.