If The Media Will Not Help You - Help Yourselves

REGULAR visitors to this blog will need no reminding, I have long criticised the remnants of the mainstream media in Scotland – in particular our fading print media – for their disgraceful lack of coverage of rugby.

OK, I accept, the few remaining staff rugby writers still earning a crust on our increasingly under-staffed and under-resourced newspapers, have never gone in for the sort of blatant fiction writing which keeps our football writers going over the summer close season. There really is no traction in “Heriot's set to sign former Welsh fly-half” type stories, similar to the shite you read on a daily basis about who is about to join one or other of Glasgow's Bigot Brothers. But, you might think they could be bothered following-up even one of the many exclusives which either The Offside Line or Aristotle have come up with in recent weeks.

I long for the good old days, when none of “The Blazers” could fart without Bill McLaren, Bill McMurtrie or Norman Mair knowing about it. The current Junta are not exactly offering the SRU world-class leadership or management, at least on the rugby side, but, rather like this hapless, some might say hopeless Toerag government in London, they are getting an awfully-easy ride for a complacent and compliant media.

But, we are told, in these 21^st century days of social media and instant access to information: “If the media isn't doing its job – become the media.” Every club has its own website, so, if the papers will not provide information, then it is surely up to the clubs to do this.

I find it strange that clubs should virtually close-down their best means of communicating with their membership at the end of one season, and tell them nothing before the start of the next.

I am not the biggest fan of the SRU's Media Department. To me, they appear to think their job is to suppress news and comment, but, even they have now got the season 2019-20 fixtures up for all to read. So, I thought I would do a quick check on what our top clubs were doing.

In truth – not a lot. I logged on to the websites of our top ten clubs – those who will be playing in the Tennent's Premiership when the new season kicks off in just eight and a half weeks' time; to check how much notice they were giving their members of what to expect in the new season.

Apparently, yet again – not a lot. Only two of the ten clubs: Aberdeen Grammar and Hawick, have got the new season's fixtures available for their members to review on the club website. Another two, Jed-forest and Musselburgh, have posted reports on the clubs' annual general meetings, but, the general view is nothing has happened since the end of the season.

Where are the notices: “Pre-season training starts on X at Y o'clock?” Does no club offer close season Strength & conditioning sessions? After all, the close season is supposedly the best time to get this done, so the players are ready to hit the ground running when the skills work starts.

With a club website, you are not curtailed by what the local paper's Sports Editor – always supposing he is pro-rugby – decides is news, worthy of his considerable talents. Is there nothing the club is doing to try to keep-up the bar income during this fallow period, which can be relayed to the members? Sadly, not much of the news, published in the websites' News sections was exactly up-to-date.

Come-on guys, if you cannot help yourselves, nobody else out there is going to help you. The media isn't interested – then Become The Media, that's the way forward.

ACCORDING to an article in Wales Online yesterday, looking at the finances of the four Welsh Regions: Cardiff Blues, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets, Glasgow Warriors are operating on a budget of £6.5 million this season, while Edinburgh's budget is £6 million.

That's good to know, because there is no way in Hell The Junta will ever want us, the stakeholders in the SRU via our clubs to ever discover the true cost. To be fair, the Welsh Rugby Union's financial stake in their Regions is not a totally-transparent figure, but, while there are other localised income streams, which are confidential, how much the central grant to the supposedly autonomous quartet is is freely available.

I wonder if, up here, we will ever manage to get to even Welsh levels of confirmation of just what a money pit professional rugby really is. I live in hope.

IN HIS capacity as Chairman of World Rugby's Laws Review Group (LRG), oor-ain John Jeffrey has been a busy boy of late. The LRG met last week and has come up with a raft of proposals, which will be the subject of a series of trials, prior to being considered for implementation.

There really is so much going on, I feel it worthy of a separate blog post. Certainly the proposal for the 50:22 kicking rule change – which would see a side successfully landing an indirect (the ball bounces infield first) kick to touch from inside their own half inside the opposition's 22 getting the resultant line out throw-in has attracted a lot of interest.

Since this particular kick is one of Finn Russell's and Stuart Hogg's particular core skills, that change could be good for Scotland, however, there are other changes being considered which are, I feel, worthy of wider consideration, and I fully intend having a closer look within the next few days.

Mind you, I would have hoped they would have looked at some of the more-obvious matters requiring attention, such as those obvious breaches of the Laws which never seem to be picked-up by the referees – squint feeds, not kicking penalties through the mark, and so forth.