WELL – WHATEVER happens, we cannot say we have not been warned. As I write this, three days out from the match, it is already clear England will be going back to the tactic they have preferred to use against us upstart Jocks for at least the last 800 years. Their Rugby team is going to over power us. Yer Sassenach doesn't do subtlety, it's all about th heavy roller for him, charging over the top of us at every opportunity.
Fair enough, the tactic has worked often enough in the past, but, when it doesn't, or when we've got a united team under a tactical genius or geniuses and with one or two playing geniuses at the sharp end: (Sir William Wallace, King Robert Bruce, Jimmy McMullan, Jim Baxter and Denis Law, Sir Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer, Gregor Townsend and Fin Russell) we are more than capable of sending the invaders homeward to think again.
In this week's Guardian, Gerard Meagher waxes lyrical about the Steve Borthwick plan to unleash his power players – Manu Tuilagi, and Ollie Lawrence at the Scottish midfield – backed-up by some hard-carrying forwards.
Now this Sassenach obsession with Tuilagi amazes me, the guy's been over the hill and injury-prone longer than Sir Andy Murray; but, while Andy keeps on playing, because it's what he wants to do, Manu appears to be kept going by being the comfort blanket English rugby feels it needs.
But elsewhere in the same paper, this week's edition of The Breakdown – The Guardian's weekly rugby blog, sees Robert Kitson waxing lyrical about the bright new dawn for the game In England, if only they can get the talent pathway correct.
On that subject, there could be some interesting chat in the posh seats at Murrayfield on Saturday. Because Conor O'Shea The RFU's Director of Performance, is swithering over finding a solution to the problems facing The Championship – the second tier of club rugby down there.
Next month looks like being a seminal month for northern hemisphere rugby. The RFU a bady which usually alters course more-slowly than Titanic ever failed to do, has given itself until the end of that month to sort out its problems around the structure of the game. In Wales, they are trying to strong-arm Cardiff into taking the tenth spot in their new Elite Domestic Competition – while damping down the fires of uprising in West Wales, and, up here, the great brains of The Junta are trying to clear the thistlew and brambles and give us a workable performance pathway.
Kitson's piece may not be perfect, and I can see club self-interest doing its best to stymie meaningful change – it is ever thus in the game; but, one particular sentence in the piece, jumped out at me – this:
As O'Shea rightly observes, the first rule of elite player development is sacrosanct: they have to play.
That has been the problem with elite player development in Scotland for years – the way the best young talent appears to spend more time in the gym than on the park, and, when they are on the park, they are too-often playing at the wrong level.
Coaches are brought up in a competitive environment, when winning is everything, so, at an age and in a competition such as Super Rugby, which was more about player development than winning the thing, clubs and coaches prefered to select more-experienced players, than to trust in youth, and to give that youth a chance to develop. The Hansen Doctrine: “You win nothing with kids”- is set in stone in British team sports.
Of course, the elephant in the room in these here British Isles is this – the only area of Rugby Union which can make money is the international game. That's the only part which can consistently pull-in big enough crowd to generate real cash. If the four Unions want to garner enough income to fund the wider game, then they have to do it via the international games – the Guinness Six Nations and the Autumn Internationals. So, they have nine or ten matches per year from which to accrue enough money to remain afloat. Actually, that number is six or seven, since it's only the home games that generate income.
The club game comes a poor second to football when it comes to attracting crowds, so it can be argued, full-time, professional rugby is a non-starter here, requiring, as in the three Celtic Unions, massive central funding, or as in the failing English model – well-heeled “sugar daddies” to underwrite the individual club losses.
Even here, only Ireland seems to have squared the circle, which perhaps has something to do with the often overlooked fact: there are only five full-time professional sports teams in the island of Ireland – the four BKT United Rugby Championship teams and the Belfast Giants ice hockey team.
The GAA sports, Gaelic Football and Hurling are arguably more-popular, but, are worn into the fabric of Irish society and are amateur, while soccer in Ireland is at best part-time, although it has to be admitted, a good number of fanatics make the weekly trip to Great Britain, to support the likes of Celtic, Liverpool, Manchester United and Rangers.
A history lesson. The (English) Football Association was formed in 1863; international football began in 1872, professionalism was recognised in 1885 and The Football League kicked off in 1888. In Scotland, the Scottish Football Association was formed in 1873, The Scottish Football League was formed in 1890 and professionalism was permitted in Scotland in 1893.
So, it took football 22 years to embrace professionalism. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) was formed in 1871. The 21 clubs broke away to form The Northern Football Union (Rugby League) in 1895, but, it took another 100 years before professionalism was allowed in Rugby Union – in 1995.
With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps, if the 1895 collection of Old Farts had allowed the controversial “broken time payments”Rugby Union in 2024 would be in a better place.
I would argue, below international level, the game does not have the drawing power to support full-time professionalism, but, it could certainly support semi-professionalism.
The question therefore is – could we come up with a format which worked within those parameters, while adequately nurturing future talent?
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