How Hard Is It To Organise A Fixture List?

I HONESTLY don't know who makes the final call, but, given his track record over his tenure in office, is am (perhaps wrongly) blaming Buddy the Elf, the Chocolate Fireguard who runs the SRU's Communications Department, for the mindless decision to make last night's Watsonians v Edinburgh Academical Arnold Clark Premiership match a live television broadcast.

That match kicked off at 7.30pm; five minutes later, just two miles away, at The Hive, Edinburgh v Leinster, the opening game in the new BKT Unitd Rugby Championship season also kickerd off.

I concede, Watsonians v Edinburgh Academical may well be the 21^st century, Rugby Union version of the old Brooklands motor racing events: “The right crowd and no crowding”, but, to quote the Scottish Rugby Union's Mission Statement, and this is a direct quote from their own website:

Scottish Rugby is the governing body for rugby union in Scotland. We work hard to grow the game and inspire Scotland through rugby.

Does having two such high-profile games on live television at the same time help grow the game and inspire Scotland through rugby?

Of course, having such a clash is nothing new. I was discussing this with another Rugby Union writer yesterday and he reminded me the opening fixture in the then new FOSROC Super Six competition saw Boroughmuir entertain Stirling County; that match was live on TV, from Meggetland, and at the same time, an Edinburgh home game was being broadcast on another channel.

Football is in many ways the Death Star to all other televised sport – it's got McDonald's/Coca-Cola level saturation. Football could probably survive a Celtic Champions League tie on TNT Sport clashing with a SPFL game being on BBC Shortbread. Rugby Union in Scotland cannot afford the luxury of clashing coverage.

There is another, more-cynical view of how last night's clash came to pass, which is that BBC Shortbread does not care what the SRU thinks, wants or does. The view from Pacific Quay in Glasgow is that: “We are the Masters of the Universe and what we say goes”. I have seen this mindset in operation across a few sports, when the boys from the Beeb saunter in and take over at a provincial ground, before swanning-off into th sunset, to not be seen there again for half a decade.

To return to that line about growing the game and inspiring, a look at the fixture schedule for the Premiership this season will have you wondering if anyone inside The Junta is capable of intelligent thought.

The SPFL, the body which runs the Scottish Football Leagues, tries as far as possible to spread the fixtures, For instance, when Rangers are at home – Celtic are away; Hearts are at home – Hibs are away. The same thing happens with the two Dundee sides, the two Ayrshire sides and the Fife and Lanarkshire sides.

Why not in Rugby? The Premiership spread is: five teams from Edinburgh, four from the Borders. Two from Ayrshire and one from Glasgow. There are 22 rounds of fixtures, take away the two head-to-heads and of the remaining 20 rounds, there are only four – rounds 8 and 9 and rounds 19 and 20 in which Ayr are at home while Marr are away, or vice versa.

Things are better in the Borders, where in 10 of the 22 rounds, two of their four teams are at home and the other two are away. That said, we are led to believe that any fan leaving his hame toon to watch the lot down the road might be placing himself in mortal danger both during and after the game – when he got home, so perhaps the availability of a good game, to attract the neutral isn't a factor down there.

The thread remains constant, however – I do not think the SRU markets the game of Rugby Union in Scotland as well as it could.

Can I say here, while I welcome the moves to reduce the over-blown staff numbers at Murrayfield, as a means of tackling the Union's dire financial position, I fear they will more-likely sacrifice the Indians who do most of the work, rather than the Chiefs, whose inadequacies as managers got us into this mess in the first place. But, if they cannot run an efficient organisation with the numbers they have, I shudder to think what will happen when the staff cuts start to bite.

EDINBURGH v LEINSTER on Friday night was a cracking watch. You always had to fancy Leinster to win it, which they duly did, but, Edinburgh gave them a hell of a game, kept going to the end and got their reward with that late try to snatch the second bonus point.

The home team let themselves down with some avoidable errors, I felt, but, it was onloy their first game of the season, and while losing at home is never a good way to start, there is hope there. One or two of the lesser names showed up well, but, there are definitely things to still work on.

That perennial Scottish problem of a line out that works consistently was again on-show, but I was delighted to see how well D'Arcy Rae coped with the usual illegal scrumming of cian Healy. Once again, however, an otherwise good referee was too lax in what he allowed the Irish team to get away with at the breakdown. And I would certainly have marched Leinster back ten metres for their reaction to that yellow card for the aerial challenge on Darcy Graham.