We Really Need To Sort-Out The Kinks In Super6

IT IS an unbreakable rule of sport – once money becomes important, the game which generates the cash has to be stretched to breaking point. Thus, today, we see the rugby season, once written in tablets of stone as lasting from 1 September of one year to 30 April of the next, now extending from mid-August until the end of May; that old piece of TV corn 'Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width' taken to extremes.

The French, of course, march to a different drum from the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, they are still playing, with the top six clubs in the Top 14 still involved in the end of season play-offs – while this season, the Scottish World Cup squad have gone seamlessly from club play into a pre-World Cup Training Camp.

Then, when you factor-in the demands of the FOSROC Super6 competition, it is clear, all-year-round Rugby Union is now upon us. So we might as well embrace it.

The final week-end of the S6 Sprint produced a degree of controversy, a lot of it ill-informed, but it also produced a very-interesting interview, at half-time in the Ayrshire Bulls v Heriot's game. This was given by SRU Performance Director Jim Mallinder, who gave us the first indication of some much-needed changes to the S6 format.

Mind you, it says much about the lack of joined-up thinking coming out of BT Murrayfield that some important points were slipped out, in the course of an interview which very-few people will have heard, rather than being announced at a formal press conference or briefing, at which some of the sharper brains in Scottish rugby journalism might have picked the obvious holes in the plan.

As I have been saying, almost from Day One – Super6 is a good idea, badly executed and with obvious flaws. However, it is the future of Performance Rugby in Scotland.

To re-hash old ground and re-state the obvious:

• We require a level of rugby which bridges the gap between the top of the club game and the professional one – S6 is that level.

• In an ideal world S6 would be fully-funded from the Performance Department budget, however, in an effort to cut costs and save money, the Union came up with the notion of franchises.

• Ideally, these franchises would have seen two in each of the Regions: Caledonia, East, South and West

• But, because of the sense of entitlement of some Edinburgh clubs, we have ended up with three franchises in the capital, where there are not enough players of the relevant standard

• Covid hit the notion of cross-border games on the head and while Mallinder, in his interview stressed this notion was still live, when cross-border play arrives, indeed, if it arrives, is still unclear.

Additionally, the SRU did not make it clear that S6 would be part of the Union's High Performance Programme – giving the false impression it was part of the clubs set-up, this communication failure has compromised S6 from the outset.

So, let's get back to basics. We now have a two-tier Scottish Rugby Union:

Scottish Rugby Union Limited runs the professional High Performance game – from Super6 to the full Scotland side. This remit includes the Academies, Age Group teams, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The Scottish Club Rugby Board runs the amateur game, involving the individual clubs around the country. Their work is funded by Scottish Rugby Limited, who have guaranteed over £1 million per year over the next five years to run the grass-roots game.

The argument around how much money the Club/Community game should receive each year is for another post. Here I am more-concerned about how we develop our top talent.

The aim of the HPP (High Performance Programme) is to produce a winning Scotland team, whose endeavours fill BT Murrayfield to the extent the Union makes enough money to properly fund the HPP, give our best players the best chance of winning, and provides a good income to support the community game.

But, the SRU can only afford to run two full-time professional teams – which gives us an absolute ceiling of around 60 front-line professional players, backed-up by perhaps another 50 or 60 “trainee” professionals, mainly playing as semi-professionals in Super Rugby.

So, talent identification and preparation of potential professional in S6, while an uncertain science, calls for some big decisions.

At the moment – it could be argued, we are not getting this right.

Since S6 is the development tier of the HPP – then the eligibility rules should reflect this, might I suggest:

• Each match-day starting XV should include a minimum of 10 Scottish-Qualified (SQ) players under the age of 23 on 1 January of that year

• 5 of the 8 designated replacements should also meet the U-23 and SQ criteria.

I am all for the inclusion of Edinburgh and Glasgow A teams in Super Rugby, but, I feel careful consideration should be given to the make-up of their sides. Current Scotland squad members, for instance, should only be allowed to play in Super rugby if they are coming back from a spell of injury – the A teams should be mainly made-up of players either in the Academies, or in their first or second year out of the Academies.

It is to be hoped that cross-border games should be part of the HPP, Perhaps the SRU ought to be pushing hard for a resumption of the British and Irish Cup. Super Rugby should be a key component in Scotland's High Performance Programme, however, the inbuilt problems which have bedevilled Super rugby since its inception, now need to be addressed as a matter or urgency.