IT WAS pleasing to see the long-running saga of SRU governance finally put to bed with Wednesday night's SGM approving the changes and the forming of the new Company Limited by Guarantee to oversee matters.
We already know the identity of four of the eight 'Custodians.' who will be in-effect the directors of the new CLG. Professor Lorne Crerar will be Chairman, while SRU President Colin Rigby and Vice-President Keith Wallace will also serve, as will immediate Past President Ian Barr, who put-in such a power of work to get the new set-up up and running.
That represents a bloody good central core, the question now will be, who else gets the nod? Two of the other four Custodians will be elected by the clubs, with two independent Custodians, identified via an external recruiting campaign, overseen by the SRU's pet head hunters company.
Gone are the days when the Union was run on the basis of 'Buggins Turn,' you got yourself noticed, served a lengthy apprenticeship and eventually, you got to shove your nose in the main trough.
Things are different now, the SRU is a multi-million pound business and a certain degree of familiarity with running an operation of that size is necessary. The final line-up will be very-interesting.
IN ANOTHER life, when I was “on the tools,” one of my more-annoying regular chores involved putting right an error – repeated weekly, mentioned weekly but never sorted, whereby the reporter who covered the local football team could never write-out that team in the correct order.
No, change that – not the correct order, make that the universally-accepted order. Because, for at least the last 100 years, and probably longer, football teams have been written-down in the media in 1-2-3-5 order – numbered 1-11. Now, I ken weel and accept, that formation hasn't been used for that same 100 years, but, it's the way it's done: goalkeeper, two full-backs, three half-backs and five forwards.
It matters not a jot that today we have umpteen different formations: to name but the most popular: 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 3-4-3, 3-5-2 and variation thereof, the team still appears in print in 1-2-3-5 order.
To be fair, the journalist whose match reports I had to partially re-write did list the team in the approved 1-2-3-5 formation, except, whereas the outfield players are always listed in right to left order, this journalist would always write them in left to right order. Now, left to right is the approved identifying order for pictures, but, for words – it's always right to left.
I suppose football, being the game for hooligans, has to keep things simple, just what the football public would make of rugby team lists, I shudder to think. Here there are different ways of listing the team.
My own choice, and the order I always use in this blog is, I feel the simplest: 1-15, or in the case of the professional game: 1-23. But, even here, I find myself somewhat conflicted. Rather like in football, rugby packs are still listed in 3-2-3 formation, an order which even the great Lord Bannerman had to admit was passé back in the mid-1950s.
Still today, we see teams listed: 1. loose-head, 2, hooker, 3, tight-head, 4-5 locks, 6,7,8 the back row. Yet, if we were to properly list them as they pack down, the guy who currently wears 6 would wear 4, while the locks would wear 5 and 6.
Within the 1-15 order, we still see differences. Some teams are listed 15 to 9, full-back to scrum-half, then 8 to 1, the number eight first, the loose-head last. Another publication might list it 15 to 9, then 1 to 8 – loose-head first, number eight last.
Mind you, I am old enough to remember when full-backs wore number 1, the three-quarters wore 2,3,4 and 5 and the half-backs 6 and 7. After that, it was a bit of a free-for-all, some teams numbered the forwards 8-15, the loose-head wearing 8, through to the number eight, wearing 15. Others gave the number eight 8 and worked forward.
Then of course, we had Leicester and Bristol, who used letters rather than numbers. Even here, they couldn't agree, Leicester listing their full back as O, going backwards through the alphabet to the scrum-half, who wore I, before handing their front row the letters A B and C, through to the number eight, who wore H.
Bristol gave their full-back A and worked forward from there to the number eight, who wore O. Bath liked to be different too, they didn't have a 13, so the full back wore 16.
Nowadays, the numbering, if not team listings, are standardised. That said, I still wonder why the replacement hooker is number 16 with the replacement props wearing 17 and 18. Surely common-sense should dictate, the loose-head wears 16, the hooker 17 and the tight-head 18.
Then you have individual foibles; the centre such as Will Greenwood, who preferred to wear 13 – even when he was playing at 12 (inside centre), or the player who will not wear 13.
Now we appear to have the numbering sorted out, might it be possible for the media to agree as to the running order when a team is listed?
Or, given the way the professional game apes the practices of elite-level football, could the day be coming when teams, as southern hemisphere touring sides used to, take the field wearing squad numbers? In football, this appears to embellish replica strip sales – with clubs earning extra cash by having the popular players' names and numbers printed on the replica strips.
With squad numbers, rugby could go down that route, indeed, I am amazed that at least in England, we have not already seen this in action.
Then we go from the sublime to the ridiculous – American Football, where players are allowed to wear numbers from 1 to 99, except, certain players in specific positions may wear some numbers, but not others, while specialist place kickers, for instance, can wear numbers 0 and 100. Now that's a whole can of worms for rugby to not think about opening.
I could even see the likes of the Edinburgh and Glasgow 'Eccies' having Roman numerals – 1 to XV or XXIII on their backs, to indicate how long they'd been playing the game.
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