Cuts Are Coming - But, How Deep will They Be?

SOME fellow members of the Scottish Rugby Brains Trust and I have been speculating on what a Scottish version of the New Zealand Rugby Union's proposed internal tournament, aimed at getting their top sides playing again, might look like.

The New Zealand proposals would have their five Super Rugby franchises playing each other in closed stadia as a means of getting them up to speed, in preparation for a later return to full play in Super Rugby and in time, the international game.

In New Zealand, with the Blues, Chiefs, Crusaders, Highlanders and Hurricanes – you have sufficient numbers to run a viable competition. We don't have that number of teams in Scotland, so, Edinburgh v Glasgow played on a constant loop simply would not work.

However, we do have – when we count the six FOSROC franchises - a total of eight teams in Scotland who are wholly-owned, or have their finances under-pinned by the SRU. Two plus six used to, when I was at school, add-up to eight; eight clubs is the right number for a viable competition. After all, the idea is to prepare the teams for a return to normality – or whatever passes for normality in this post-pandemic world.

If, as we have been told, S6 is, in part, to be a means of bridging the gap between the club and professional tiers of the game, well, here is a good opportunity, by mixing and matching, to see how deep is our talent pool, and how well the full-time and semi-professional players perform together.

New Zealand TV will, naturally, fall over themselves to broadcast the games involving their teams – even if these are played in empty stadia. Ah hae ma doots about Premier Sports being as-keen to showcase my proposed eight-club series.

Indeed, it may well be that, if such a tournament was to be played, the only broadcast outlet might be Scottish Rugby TV, or, perhaps if the SRU asked politely enough – BBC Shortbread.

Given we would probably have to see player pools mixed-up somewhat, I don't know if we could stick with the usual team names. We could always rename the teams temporarily, perhaps as districts: Caledonia North, Caledonia Midlands, Edinburgh North, Edinburgh South, The South, The Borders, Glasgow, West of Scotland.

However, from where I am sitting, getting the big boys back playing is not the most-important thing. How we get the grass roots clubs playing, and what sort of game they will be embracing, is far-more important to the long-term well-being of the game in Scotland.

While I can still see the game of rugby being shut down for the remainder of 2020, and well into 2021, how we get things restarted at ordinary club level will, I feel, be THE most-difficult problem for the SRU to overcome.

The Union's entire management model in recent years has been focussed on the professional game. The basic tactic is to have a Scotland team playing such entertaining, successful rugby, that every game at BT Murrayfield is a sell-out and that gate money generated, plus the TV income runs the entire show.

So, after the financial hit the Union will have to take with the shut-down, it stands to reason, the executive's focus will be on getting the golden goose back laying again.

And the ordinary clubs, who regardless of the fact they own the Union, tend to be perceived in the corridors of power as something of a drain on resources and time, well, they will come a poor second to the performance teams when it comes to the paid administrators' attention span.

Mind you, this morning's news that the New Zealand Rugby Union is considering losing half of its 180 full-time staff, coming on top of rumours of carnage on the job front at Twickenham, an absolute melt down in Sydney and prophesies of doom in Cardiff, just might cause some concern among the 450 employees of the SRU.

Surely, if we are to survive – we MUST lose a lot of fat from BT Murrayfield. Well, if they ask me, I could, like Koko, the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado provide a little list, and I could guarantee, of the names on that list: “There's none of them be missed, there's none of them be missed.”

This pandemic offers us a chance to restructure the SRU and Scottish Rugby, and make it ready to move ahead, once we get to what I hope will be the new normal. But, will the game take this chance? I hope so.