Let's Flag Up Regular Season Success

I AM NOT a great believer in end-of-season play-offs – unless two teams finish with absolutely identical records at the end of the league campaign marathon. In that rare instance, yes, who not? Otherwise, for me, pure league play should determine what is the best team, and they ought to lift the silverware.

Football's league winners get a flag - why shouldn't rugby's?

However, in these days of increasing professionalism, where every last penny has to be prized from the hand of the public, play-offs are in – extending the season, providing a wee bit more media coverage and producing more income.

The play-offs are, of course, a product of that bastion of professional sport, North America. In basketball's NBA for instance, each team has to play 82 regular season games, simply to reach the end of season play-offs. Then, assuming a team finishes in the top eight in their particular conference, they go into the play-offs, playing down to the eventual Championship match-up to determine the NBA Champions.

Each play-off match-up consists of a best of seven games series, so, it is possible for a team to have to play 28 play-off games, to win the title. That's a total of 110 games, in a season which stretches from October until June, and involves multiple trips back and forth across the four time zones in the North American continent.

We don't have that problem in Scotland, well, apart from allegedly having to turn your watch back 150 years in certain towns in the Borders, and back to 1690 if you're playing in Cumnock!!

So, do we really need play-offs in the Premiership?

Surely, finishing top of the table at the end of the 18 rounds of games should be good enough/ Except, it has not always worked-out that the team topping the regular season table goes on to win the play-offs.

You can therefore have a situation whereby a team romps unbeaten through the regular season, scoring bonus-point wins in every game, yet loses in the play-off semi-final and ends up with nothing. All those wins, all that dominance, undone by one bad performance, or, as I have seen with my own eyes – undone by refereeing incompetence; and you end up with nothing.

So, why doesn't the SRU ensure that, as happens with the conference winners in North American sport, the team topping the Premiership at the close of the regular season, gets at least a pennant – something tangible to mark their efforts?

Or, what is wrong with awarding, as happens in our domestic football, a league flag to the top team at the close of the regular season?

SCOTLAND finished fifth in the latest round of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Circuit, in Hamilton, New Zealand. A result which, if the squad's good form continues, might have ramifications for Team GB's participation in the 2020 Olympic Games Sevens.

 Mark Bennett on his way to his 2016 Olympic silver medal

Scotland's Sevens squad could put a spoke in preparations for 2020

There is already an agreement in place, between the RFU, the SRU and the WRU which has made England the “lead” nation when it comes to Team GB's Olympic qualifying, and their endeavours to at least equal, if not better, the silver medal which the squad, including Scots Mark Bennett and Mark Robertson won in Rio.

Host nation Japan are already through, to be joined, at the end of this season's Sevens circuit, by the four leading nations – currently, in descending order: Fiji, USA, New Zealand and South Africa.

England lie fifth, having accrued 38 points from the three tournaments played so far, in Dubai, Cape Town and Hamilton. But, Scotland, on 33 points are seventh, and closing.

So, we have the prospect of Scotland perhaps overhauling England, and maybe denying them that top four finish. A failure to gain automatic qualification isn't the end of the world, however. There is a European qualifying tournament, scheduled for Moscow on 31 August and 1 September this year.

The chances are, a full Team GB squad will be selected for that tournament, from which only the winners will qualify for one of the 12 places in the Olympics proper. But, if Scotland's star continues to rise, and England's continues to fall – what will the make-up of that squad be?

The mischief-maker in me would love it, if the SRU sent a Scotland squad to Moscow, and, if they won, claimed we should become Team GB in Japan. Better still, if, between then and the start of the Games, we won our independence.

(If Scotland does become independent before 2020, however, it is highly-unlikely, in fact impossible, that a Scottish Olympic Committee will have been formed, and membership of the IOC gained. The reality is, if we do win our Freedom, Scotland's first Olympics will be the 2022 Winter Olympics or the 2024 Summer Games.)

I HAVE BEEN an Andy Davidson fan since first seeing him, as a lanky teenager, playing for Glasgow Hawks. Back then, he often formed a boiler-house partnership with Scott Cumming – just as they had first done at Kelvinside Academy.

Andy Davidson, will swap Tyneside for Clydeside next season

So I am delighted to see that Andy is being brought “home” from Newcastle Falcons to play for Glasgow Warriors next season. He was messed around with somewhat when he came out of the SRU Academy, so he took himself off to Newcastle, where he has quietly learned his trade and developed.

I am sure he can become a key man for Warriors, in a position where their resources have been stretched this season, particularly since big Brian Alainu'uese and Greg Peterson were allowed to leave.

His return also confirms Kelvinside Accies as Scotland's second row factory, with Jonny Gray also being a former pupil.

Meanwhile, Alex Dunbar is moving immediately to Newcastle on-loan, as Warriors seek to get him game time. The last two seasons have pretty-much been write-offs for the popular Scotland centre, who has spent more time on the injured list than playing; and with the Premiership shut down for the duration of the 6 Nations, then gong into the play-offs, he has few opportunities to get game time with Ayr.

In any case, on his only occasion in pink and black this campaign, he was largely anonymous. Dunbar, who turns 29 in April, badly needs a run of games, if only to put himself in the shop window, with his Warriors contract up at the end of the season. He really needs to show he can still be the game changer he was before his run of injuries kicked-in and other, younger players profited from his absence.