Change Is A Comin', But, The Junta Will Fight It

I FIND it extremely difficult to blog on rugby at the moment. Sure, when at the coal face, in normal times, I take the sport seriously, whether offering my twopenceworth on the matters of the day, or reporting on a match, but, I always remember the sage advice given me by the great Ian “Dan” Archer, these 40-years ago on the old and lamented 'Sunday Standard.'

“Commander, never forget, while we take our jobs seriously, we are the comic pages of this newspaper, the light relief at the back.”

This advice from a writing legend, contrasts vividly with the ethos of a managerial legend: my second cousin, twice-removed, one Wullie Shankly. Shanks, if truth be told, was a football zealot; some say the gospel according to Shankly was him joking, but, from what I have learned from those in the broader family who knew him – and one of my uncles was his “mucker” down the pit – when Shanks said: “Some of you people think football is a matter of life or death, it isn't, it's more-important than that,” he was being serious, he really believed that.

And that single-minded sense of football purpose drove him from relative poverty in Glenbuck to the status of a diety on Merseyside and beyond.

Any way, as I was saying, it's hard to find things to write about in rugby just now, when the world is in such turmoil. We do not know what lies ahead, what the game will look like when we come out the other end of this pandemic, but, one thing we can be pretty sure of, it will be greatly changed.

And this has very-serious implications for the Scottish Rugby Union and the game in Scotland. We are in the middle of what is a normal situation up here in God's Country – we are not totally at-war with the English, so we keep in trim by going off abroad as mercenaries, or, by staying at home and fighting among ourselves, be it MacLeod v Macdonald, Macdonald v Campbell, McGregor v Colquhoun, back in the old days of clan warfare, or, today's rugby battles.

Since Gala cannot currently take-on Hawick, or Heriot's have a go at Watsonians, or Glasgow Accies and GHK do battle across the Anniesland fence, we are taking sides in whats app groups discussing governance and the way forward.

Now, in an ideal world, the clubs would have put their differences aside and used the current breathing space to have formed a united front against the ruling Junta. But, they cannot even do that. Getting the decision-makers in the club game to agree is, I am told, even harder than herding cats.

And while all this in-fighting takes place, well, I am prepared to bet the farm on The Junta holding their own wee interweb conclaves and working hard to ensure, when the dust clears and we get back to normal – they will still control Scottish Rugby.

I think it is fairly obvious, once something like normality is restored, this will be a new normality. The SRU will need to be a slimmer, fitter organisation, better equipped to operate in a world where sports sponsorship will be more-difficult to come by.

I would suggest, a good few of the 450 jobs within the organisation will vanish as the new reality bites, but, this will perhaps be fiercely resisted by the imperial overlords in-charge of the various wee empires.

I have seen suggestions, we might be reduced to a single full-time professional team, competing in the PRO14, or even the long-suggested British Isles League. I don't think the SRU will cut that savagely, we do need a minimum of two full-time teams, in my view.

What I could envisage is these two teams having smaller squads, with the fringe players distributed around the Super6 clubs – perhaps with another two franchises offered-up.

I have never deviated from my belief, starting Super6 was a tacit admission from Murrayfield, they could not attract the private finance required to properly fund professional rugby in Scotland, and could only underwrite the two teams, so, they persuaded ambitious clubs to take-up the slack.

Well, when the current situation ends, things will be even tighter, and down-grading fringe players to semi-professional rather than full-time professional status is an option which will need to be looked at.

Further down the food chain, I can see the belt-tightening causing a cut in the number of national leagues. I have long maintained, to have approximately one-third of the clubs playing competitive rugby in Scotland playing at “national” level is a nonsense.

In football, by far a bigger and more-popular sport in Scotland, there are, excluding the 500 clubs in membership of the Scottish Amateur FA, or the 900 clubs in membership of the Scottish Youth FA, there are approximately 250 Scottish clubs playing in the SPFL, the Highland and Lowland Leagues, the East of Scotland and South of Scotland leagues and the various leagues in membership of the Scottish Junior FA.

Only 42, or 16% of these clubs play in a national league. In rugby, we have approximately 150 clubs playing in the adult leagues structure, with 46, or 31% of these clubs playing in a national league.

To me, that is too-high a percentage, better to cut the number of national leagues to make life easier for the smaller clubs. In the much-changed landscape which will follow the end of the pandemic, I can see the case for retrenching of clubs and resources becoming overwhelming.

As a wee aside here, when introducing |Agenda 3, my pal TCD attracted a lot of abuse when he came up with the phrase: “Fewer but stronger clubs.” I can see fewer but hopefully stronger happening when the pandemic is beaten.

Indeed, the fewer but stronger suggestion is not new, one of the football officials to whom I spoke when gathering my figures for this blog actually used that phrase – it was something his association had done, and it worked.

However, one thing I do believe, and I wish I didn't, is this. When the big decisions as to the way forward post pandemic have to be made, there is a very-good chance, the SRU will get it wrong.