With Respect Mr Telfer - I think You're Wrong

JIM TELFER was quoted earlier in the weekend, as bemoaning the lack of “hard men” in modern-day Scottish Rugby. I feel, maybe the Melrose Maestro, who is admittedly close to entering his ninth decade, is getting a wee bit old.

The days of the genuine “hard man” are over. You would never get away with even a quarter of the things that went on when Creamy was playing. I mean, when last did you see a proper free-for-all at a reasonably high level of the game?

Sure, you still get punch-ups at the “Coarse Rugby” end of the game, but, at the top end of the club game, and into the full-time professional game, it's mainly man bags at ten paces these days. Mind you, you hear tales of Saracens deciding, before the side's first European meeting this season, it might be a good idea to wind-up Ryan Wilson. This did not go well, when Jamie George, the Saracens, England an Lions hooker, had his nose broken by Wilson.

Still Telfer made it clear, he wasn't referring to the sort of hard man who goes around looking for a fight, but, to guys like Fin Calder and David Leslie, who simply played the game on the edge and never asked for, or conceded an inch.

I don't know, I think we have a few guys today who play like that, but, we Scots do not go in for the macho posturing we see so-much of in England. And posturing is what it is. I often wonder how England's number one and two wind-up merchants, Messrs Itoje and Sinkler would have got on against the Beastie McLauchlan approach – basically: “Whack,” followed by: “That was your warning son.”

The first time I saw Joe Marler, was in a pre-season Harlequins v Glasgow game at The Stoop. In the first minute he hit Gordy Reid late and from behind. Big Gordy simply thumped him back, immediately. Marler was a very-good boy thereafter, taking great care, it seemed to me, to keep away from Gordy.

We do have hard men in Scotland today – it's just, they don't parade their hardness in the same way as the English guys do.

THERE ARE concerning rumours going the rounds, that yesterday's match between Glasgow Hawks and Stirling County might have been Hawks' final game – ever.

Hawks was a brave step when Brian Simmers and Co set-up the side, as a means of maintaining top-level club rugby in Glasgow. That was right at the start of Open Rugby, but, sadly, for all the early promise and encouraging, events have since conspired to derail Simmers' original excellent vision.

Warriors became what Hawks might have been. It didn't help that there were those inside the clubhouses on both sides of the Anniesland hedge, who resented Hawks rendering GHK and Glasgow Accies largely meaningless.

The final blow, however, was that absolutely ridiculous and indefensible decision of the SRU's “independent” committee, which analysed and ruled-on the viability of the franchise bids – to have three franchises in Edinburgh and none in Glasgow.

[A wee diversion here – John Beattie, back when he was writing regularly in the then influential Glasgow Herald – always insisted: Glasgow Academy and Academicals might be “the posh boys”, “the Establishment” in Glasgow, but, when they went to play Edinburgh Accies, or Watsonians, or Fettes – they were: “the hicks from the sticks.” You get the impression that sort of thinking is still abroad in the capital.]

The guys and gals at Hawks have worked very hard to establish their club and keep them competitive at the top flight. But, they don't have a ground of their own, they don't have a strong supporter base, they don't have a second team – you fear for Hawks' survival going forward, and, sadly, the body language of one or two Hawks' stalwarts is unsettling.

I hope I am wrong, because there are a lot of genuinely nice, very hard-working rugby people involved in Hawks, but: forrit tho' Ah canna see, Ah guess and fear.

ONE THING we do now know, following yesterday's 18^th and final round of Tennent's Premiership matches, is the line-up for the Premiership play-off semi-finals, on 30 March. Ayr will now face Melrose, while Heriot's will entertain Currie Chieftains, after the clubs finished respectively first, fourth, second and third in the regular season.

That pairing of Ayr and Melrose means back-to-back fixtures for the pair, since they will lock horns at The Greenyards in the Scottish Cup semi-final on 30 March, just seven days after the play-off semi-final. And, it is not outwith the powers of possibility that we could also see back to back meetings of Ayr and Heriot's, since they have home advantage in the play-offs and are both still also in the last four of the Cup.

I REMEMBER, some 40 years ago now, interviewing Richie Dixon for the old Scottish Rugby newspaper, about his involvement, as a consultant with the Swedish Rugby Union. This was part of an IRB (as World Rugby then was) initiative whereby the established European Unions took a newish small union under their wing – and Sweden came under Scotland's bailiwick.

With all this nonsense about the World League going on, might it not be an idea to refine this initiative.

[Another wee thought, the SRU, in setting-up Super-6, ignore the claims of Glasgow, and have no franchises north of the central belt; World Rugby, in setting-up the World League, totally ignore the Pacific Islands, in favour of Japan and the USA. Is there something skewed in the thought processes of rugby administrators world-wide?]

I accept, we have our own problems in domestic rugby – not least a chronic lack of money and, in Scotland, a currently losing battle with fitba for media interest. But, as one of the Establishment nations, I feel we have a duty to help the lesser nations improve and to make rugby a more-successful game across the globe.

This is a subject I will return to in a later blog.