Are Our Clubs Doing Enough To Help Themselves?

NO MATTER what rugby topic I blog about on here, I continually get comments along the lines of: “the clubs are being ignored,” or: “what is the Council doing to protect the clubs' interests?”

There are still an awful lot of “Aye Beeners” out there in clubland who yearn for the days of top internationalists still playing on a weekly basis for their clubs and seeking a return to the old pattern of Clubs – Districts – the international team.

Well this is not going to happen any time soon, or as far as I can see, ever again. As yon song says: “These days are past and in the past they must remain.” However I retain a belief that: “We can still rise and be a (leading rugby) nation again.”

The shape of Scottish rugby looks to me over the next ten years, to be one of the slow drift apart of the game's tectonic plates. The club game will evolve and change, but, will gradually become divorced from the performance game.

The SRU play book, as currently written, has the international team as the main money-making stream, under-pinned by successful Edinburgh and Glasgow teams. They will generate the cash which will drive the game forward. However, I can see, the SRU wants to see a bit more self-help further down the food chain.

I understand the Super-6 clubs will be given a bit of leeway to arrange their own sponsorships and generate funds. I hear they might even be allowed to find their own league title sponsor and thereby bring more cash into rugby.

Also, the new Regional Directors and Regional Managers, introduced by Sheila Begbie's overhaul of the old Domestic department into the new Rugby Development department are mainly commercial rather than rugby experts.

A lot of their initial time will be spent helping clubs better maximise their assets, diversify into new cash-generating schemes, which will fund these clubs' continued development and ensure a healthy future. The feedback I have received from some of their early interaction with the grass roots clubs has all been positive. Let's hope this is a harbinger of what is to come.

For instance, do the ordinary clubs make best use of the facilities they already have? I remember, over 30 years ago on a Scotland tour to North America, we visited a club in Edmonton, on a midweek night, to find a women's aerobics class going on in the function room – this was something unheard-of in Scotland at the time and, I warrant, it is still fairly rare for your average Scottish club to be doing something like this.

I accept, no ordinary club could afford to build an indoor facility like Oriam, Ravenscraig or Toryglen, but, my old mate Iain King, past Head of Sport at the Scottish Sun, now coaching in Toronto, can speak of his Canadian club having the use of an inflatable, covered pitch, the dome as he calls it, to ward-off the worst of the Ontario winter.

A Canadian sports dome - why not in Scotland?

OK, we don't have several feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures on a regular basis in Scotland, but, if our top clubs had such facilities, might not such a covered pitch encourage more players to come out and train on those dark, damp, dreich Scottish nights of wind-blown, in-your-face rain.

It doesn't even need to be a grand edifice, I remember, about half a century ago, reading a piece in Rugby World, about how even the lowliest club team in rural New Zealand had access to a shed – a basic barn which allowed at least scrums and lines-out to be practised indoors in even the worst winter nights.

But, putting in place such facilities will be down to ambitious clubs, willing to sign-up to attaining Bronze, Silver or Gold standard in the SRU's club sustainability system, assuming that is still on the go.

Our best chance of getting participation numbers up might yet be in making it easier for single team clubs to flourish. I can remember, when working in Paisley, there was Paisley RFC and Old Craigieleans. Now OC was for want of a better word, a “rebel” team, established by former Craigielea members who didn't fancy throwing in their lot with Old Grammarians, when the amalgamations which formed Paisley came about.

I think OC fully-met Iain Milne's criteria as a club for “bad” players – these guys simply wanted to play a game on a Saturday, then have a few beers. Sadly, OC now appears to have died.

But, what if there was a level of rugby at which such clubs could play – we could perhaps look at amended ten-a-side laws, build-in a wee bit of flexibility and allow guys who simply wanted to have a run-around on a Saturday to do this.

Then, there was a suggestion I saw earlier this week, I think on an Australian web site. Basically this was a: “Turn-up and play” day. A “hub” club makes a pitch available, you say: “OK we're in,” then turn-up. Say four clubs arrive, each with a different number of players; those players are divvied-up as best they can be and games are played.

You don't have the organisation of sanctions you do in “normal” league play, but, you've got guys out there playing rugby. Who knows what otherwise undiscovered talent might be unearthed.

Are we working hard enough to encourage sevens, or Tartan Touch, or Walking Rugby? It's easy to criticise the SRU for not doing enough, but, the best help is often self-help. Are the clubs doing all they can to make rugby attractive and to grow the game?

I know growing the game needs volunteers, and enthusiasm. We can maybe expect Murrayfield to do more in generating money into the game, but, maybe the clubs themselves should be using some of that money to get the necessary additional bodies involved.

We maybe need, also, to make the game more-attractive to kids, but, without willing adult volunteers, we can do nothing. And, I feel getting them sourced, motivated and backed-up is the job of the clubs themselves.