Different Priorities For Different Clubs

I AM not too-disappointed at Glasgow Warriors losing to La Rochelle on Sunday. When as very-good team has home advantage over a good team, you expect them to make that home advantage count, and that's what happened. Glasgow didn't crumble or capitulate, but, that shows you what can happen when one team has a much-bigger budget than the other.

If professional rugby was like professional football, where it was all about winning and promoting the product – through replica strips etc, and to Hell with the good of the game, well, yes, I might be calling on the Glasgow management to splash the cash and making big-money signings in an effort to compete with the La Rochelles of this world.

But, the SRU's management plan is that they make the bulk of their money from the full international side, packing BT Murrayfield. Warriors and Edinburgh are fully-professional as a means of bringing Scottish players up to the level whereby they can compete for the national side.

There are weaknesses in the Glasgow side, but, this is still a young team, perhaps a couple of years away from its peak, so, I am not too-downhearted at their defeat. If the weaknesses are addressed, in the longer-term, we will be smiling.

I KNOW, form fluctuates – but class is eternal; with that in mind, I am starting to feel confident about the Six Nations. OK, one or two injuries and we will be struggling, but, on the European stage at the weekend, several of our key men: Finn Russell, Stuart Hogg, Jonny Gray, Ali Price, played well. Others such as Huw Jones, Kyle Steyn and Matt Scott also impressed. And that Edinburgh win at Saracens was a real team effort.

We traditionally do better in the 6N when we have England and France up here, I suspect those mainly London-based rugby hacks who already have us marked down to finish fifth of the six nations could have egg on their florid faces come the final whistle.

I HAVE a growing respect for The Guardian's Michael Aylwin. He is definitely on-point when it comes to covering the issue which the governing bodies, from World Rugby down would rather go away – the long-term effects of head injuries in Rugby Union.

American Football and Boxing are further down the road in assessing and reacting to the effects of repeated blows to the head than Rugby Union, but, it would be a negligent governing body which did not prepare itself for a court-room battle, as greater research and the accumulation and analysis of that data grows, moving forward.

As Aylwin writes, a year ago, Steve Thompson, the 2003 World Cup-winning England hooker was one of just eight players prepared to sue the game's authorities following his Early-Onset Dementia (EOD) diagnosis. Today, there are over 150 cases in the pipeline and the roll-call is unlikely to end there. Rugby Union has a growing problem.

Aylwin reveals, the odds of a diagnosis of EOD is one in 10,000. Seventy-five cases have already been identified, one in 20 of the professional rugby players in England and Wales during the period 1995-2010.

Clearly, Rugby Union has a problem; one I fear which is not yet being properly addressed by World Rugby. Here is a brief extract from an email which I received this morning from friend of the blog: Left Field:

“World Rugby with its recent token gesture on law changes in the community game is passing the ball back to the individual Unions for EACH of them to decide what changes to make but only in the community game!

This is not leadership but abdication of responsibility because which Union will unilaterally make such changes AND only in the community game

Let me beat my drum again and repeat my familiar rant again !

My God remember apart from the concussions tallies THREE players actually DIED in France and ONE in England in the last four or five years.

Lets be positive with an aim to make rugby safer and more attractive .

• Let’s emphasise the goal of rugby to run for space not collision

• let’s set laws that minimise breakdown time

• ban high and double tackles

• penalise the taking out of players without the ball

• let’s referee offside defensive alignments more strongly

• lets reduce the size of the bench to stop 5 fresh juggernauts coming on with 20/30 minutes to go ( and give more players more game time in reserve team matches )

Hello is anybody listening up there ?”

Over to you Dublin – is anyone listening?

I SEE Melrose RFC has kept things in-house, with the appointment of Bruce Ruthven (pictured below), to replace Ron Chrystie as Head Coach of the Southern Knights.

When wee Rob was promoted to his new post heading-up the Edinburgh Academy's squad of Stage III players, there was a great deal of speculation as to who would get the Knights' gig. Bigger names were rumoured to be in line for the job, but Ruthven, who is Melrose to the core as a former club captain, a veteran of 196 games for the club, he knows how things work at the Greenyards.

Currently coaching the Melrose Club XV, in National League 1, Ruthven has certainly earned his stripes in his coaching career to date and I am sure, with him at the helm, the Knights will continue to be one of the top sides in Super6, which resumes early next year.

He will take-up his new post, which he will fit-in with his “day job” as rugby co-ordinator at Erskine-Stewart's Melville College in Edinburgh.

Ruthven will not be the only new coach in S6 when it resumes, I know who the other new boy will be, but, am sworn to secrecy until the official announcement, which will come quite soon.