A REMINDER – The only area of professional Rugby Union which makes money in this professional era is the international game: the Autumn Internationals and the Six Nations. With this in-mind, the Scottish Rugby Union's chosen management model is that the full Scotland team, playing an attractive brand of attacking rugby fills BT Murrayfield on six or seven occasions each season. Those six or seven games, or the money they pull-in, keeps the game alive in Scotland.
To keep most of Scotland's small core of international-class players ticking over and ready for the international game, the SRU has established two full-time professional teams, Edinburgh Rugby and Glasgow Warriors, to play in the United Rugby Championship.
Some would say, in an ideal world, these two clubs should be privately-owned and independent of the SRU. Others argue, since the primary function of the teams is to prepare Scottish players for the international team and international rugby, the SRU has to have a heavy involvement in the management of these teams.
As with everything, it comes down to the bottom line. The last SRU Annual Report, for season 2020-21 shows the cost of running International and Professional Rugby (the full Mens and Women's Scotland teams, the age group teams, the Sevens squad, Edinburgh and Glasgow) was £27,688,000.
However, between ticket and broadcasting income alone, including a figure of £5,400,000 identified as income from professional rugby, we have income of £33,563,000. (This does not as far as I can tell, include income from corporate hospitality).
Exactly how much the two full-time professional teams cost to run is a State Secret, but, received wisdom has this figure as around £4,000,000 per team. Therefore, given we only see £5,400,000 written down as income from professional rugby – they are loss-making entities, subsidised from the greater income of the national side.
These figures also indicate, we are not going to see either Edinburgh or Glasgow sold-off to private investors any time soon. Indeed, given their reason for surviving – to prepare Scotland players for international duty, I would argue, there is no need to ever sell-off either team to private owners.
Now we come to the meat on the bones of this article. We are now into the “cattle market” part of the rugby year. New signings for season 2022-23 are being announced, while departures from existing squads are also being revealed. In this post, I intend dealing with Glasgow Warriors, and what we know about their cast sale from this season and recruitment for next.
Between the two pre-season games, against Newcastle Falcons and Worcester Warriors and the23 competitive games to date in the URC and in Europe, 54 players pulled on a Warriors' strip in season 2021-22. I was unable to find out how many minutes those players who stripped for the game played against Worcester Warriors, so, I ignored the two pre-season games.
In the 23 competitive games, however,46 players played between 9 and 1478 minutes. The least-used player was Jordan Lenac, who got nine minutes off the bench in one game, while the busiest was Richie Gray, who took the field 20 times in accruing those 1478 minutes. Gray was only the second most-used player, young Ross Thompson featured in 21 of the 23 games, accruing 1229 minutes play.
Over the season, which still has at least one more game to go, Warriors' 'First Team squad” was (in 1-23 order):
Jamie Bhatti, Johnny Matthews, Zander Fagerson, Richie Gray, Kieran McDonald-Seran, Ryan Wilson, Rory Darge, Jack Dempsey; Ali Price, Ross Thompson; Cole Forbes, Sam Johnson, Sione Tuipoluto, Kyle Steyn; Josh McKay. Replacements: George Turner, Ollie Kebble, Simon Berghan, Scott Cummings, Rob Harley, Jamie Dobie, Duncan Weir, Ollie Smith.
Twenty-one of those players are “Scotland-qualified” the two NSQ (Non-Scotland-qualified) players being Australian Jack Dempsey and New Zealander Josh McKay. Dempsey has been Warriors' third most-used player this season, accruing 1469 minutes of action over 20 games, while McKay has managed 1103 minutes of action over 14 games.
Warriors have employed a further seven NSQ players this season:
Enrico Pierotti – 11 games, 253 minutes; Lewis Bean – 11 games, 230 minutes; Sebastian Concilliere – 9 games, 651 minutes; Domingo Miotti – 5 games, 154 minutes; Brad Thyer (short-term loan from Cardiff) 3 games, 80 minutes; Walter Fifita – 2 games, 101 minutes and Jordan Lenac – 1 game, 9 minutes.
The median figures for Warriors' players appearances this season are: 11 games and 604 minutes. Of the nine NSQ players who featured this season, only Dempsey, McKay, Pierotti and Bean were above the median figure in appearances and only Dempsey, McKay and Cancilliere above the median figure in minutes played.
Is the employment of such NSQ players, in a team whose primary purpose is to prepare Scottish players for international rugby, the best use of SRU resources?
It could be argued, Dempsey is “an X-factor player.” He brings something extra to the table, just as previous NSQ players such as Nico Matawalu, Leone Nakarawa and DTH van der Merwe did. But, in employing the other players, good though they may be, Scottish players are being denied game time and experience. This cuts across one of the principal reasons for running the two teams.
The need for some NSQ players could be understood in the days of the PRO12 and PRO14, when, during the international windows, league games were still played. Under the URC, there are no longer league games during the international windows – so, we do not have the same need for experienced non-Scots.
Also, we must not forget: There is no relegation from the URC, so we can more-readily give our young talent a chance.
How badly Scotland compares with Ireland when it comes to giving young players a chance was vividly exposed in a Facebook post I read last week.
This demonstrated how Leinster have fielded 59 different players this season, including 13 Academy players. The official Glasgow Warriors website lists 8 Academy players:
Gregor Brown, Euan Cunningham, Fin Callaghan, Angus Fraser, Rory Jackson, Robbie McCallum, Alex Samuel and Max Williamson. Of those eight players, only Brown got any game time - 31 minutes over the last two games the team has played to date.
A further four players: Ratu Tagive, Pete Horne, Hamish Bain and Tom Jordan never saw a minute's action over the season. You simply have to ask – just what is going on at Scotstoun?
Warriors' team-building for next season has seen them recruit two NSQ South Africans: JP du Preez and Sintu Manjezi, both are lock forwards and are seen in many quarters as direct replacements for Rob Harley and Hamish Bain, both of whom will leave Scotstoun at the end of the season. No harm to the guys, but, neither comes into the category of “a marquee signing,” i.e. a player who is going to slot straight into the first team and make a difference.
Warriors already have two younger, just as big Scots on the books, in Alex Samuel and Max Williamson. Common sense suggests the team would be better giving them opportunities, rather than paying the wages of two second-rate South Africans.
But, when did common sense have anything to do with how the SRU mis-manages the professional/performance game?
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