Edinburgh Face Mission Almost Impossible

IN THE BY-GONE days of yore, when Scottish Football teams still had aspirations of reaching the later rounds of the European Cups, the ties were two-legged affairs, settled on aggregate score and received wisdom had it, a three-goal lead from the first leg generally meant you would go through to the next round.

Occasionally, a team would surrender a three-goal first leg lead, and do enough in the second leg, particularly if this was at home, to beat the odds – most-memorably perhaps when Kilmarnock gave Eintracht Frankfort a three-goal lead, conceded an early fourth goal in the second leg at Rugby Park, then hit back to score five goals and win the tie.

That is the sort of performance Edinburgh will need to come up with when they host Glasgow Warriors, at Scottish Gas Murrayfield tomorrow, given Warriiors have a 19 point advantage from their five tries to two, 33-14 win at Hampden on Sunday.

Can they pull it off? Well, you can never say never, but, looking at the respective team selections for tomorrow's game – Ah hae ma doots. The majority of the home team will need to up their game considerably from the first leg, while hoping their opponents enjoyed too good a Christmas for their own good. Edinburgh will definitely have to pull-out the game of their collective lives, but, against that, it is impossible to not see this Franco Smith-coached Warriors team reacting positively to the challenge.

It is good to see Hamish Watson being brought out of cold storage to sit on the bench in this one, but it will be asking a lot of even the Mish, to make that much of a difference, when he is unleashed.

With home advantage, I can see Edinburgh possibly edging this game, but, I fear, that 19-point start makes it all but ineviatble that Warriors will win.

The teams for tomorrow are:

Edinburgh: Boan Venter, Dave Cherry, D'Arcy Rae, Sam Skinner, Grant Gilchrist (Captain), Jamie Ritchie, Luke Crosbie, Ben Muncaster; Ali Price, Ross Thompson; Duhan van der Merwe, Mosese Tuipulotu, Matt Currie, Darcy Graham; Wes Goosen. Replacements: Paddy Harrison, Pierre Scheoman, Javan Sebastian, Marshall Sykes, Hamish Watson; Charlie Shiel, Ben Healy, James Lang.

Glasgow Warriors: Jamie Bhatti, Gregor Hiddleston, Zander Fagerson, Gregor Brown, Scott Cummings, Ally Miller, Matt Fagerson, Jack Mann; Jamie Dobie, Tom Jordan; Kyle Stein (Captain), Sione Tuipulotu, Huw Jones, Sebastian Cancelliere; Kyle Rowe. Replacements: Grant Stewart, Rory Sutherland, Sam Talaki, Alex Samuel, Rory Darge, Angus Fraser; George Horne, Dunky Weir.

Just one wee point about tomorrow's game; I note Irishman Eoghan Cross will have the whistle, with an Irish TMO in Leo Colgan. OK oor ain Sam Grove-White and Mike Adamson are on-duty in Limerick tonight, for the Munster v Leinster game, but, surely we ought to have one of our own Big Three in-charge at Murrayfield, with two of our other United Rugby Championship regulars, such as Ian Kenny and Andrew McMenemy on the team. We may now have more officials getting big gigs than at any time in the past, so why not an all-Scottish officiating team for the all-Scottish games?

I WATCHED, on Christmas Day, a documentary on the legendary Liverpool Boot Room, and the men who built that legend. An interesting snippet from it concerned Ian Rush, who cost the club £300,000 – a not inconsiderable sum back then, but was immediately consigned to the Liverpool Reserve Team.

It was quickly apparent, when he was allowed to train with the first team, that the better the players he was playing with and against, the better Rush played, and the more goals he scored. What you may ask has this to do with Scottish Rugby. Well, think not of a Welsh footballer, but a Scottish Rugby player – Duhan van der Merwe.

In an Edinburgh shirt, the big man often struggles to get into, far less impose his considerable talent, on a game. But, if we accept that Rugby Union wingers are the Strikers of that game, then, particularly from his endeavours in a Scotland shirt, Duhan's strike rate of 0.68 tries per game is exceptional; whereas with his club, he only scores at a rate of 0.4 tries per game.

Rush's Liverpool strike rate, for comparison, was 0.51 goals per game. His strike rate for Wales was 0.38 gpg.

The players charged with getting the ball to Duhan in club games are certainly not as good as those he plays with for Scotland: Finn Russell, and the “Shugipulotu” midfield partnership, which reinforces that old Rugby Union chestnut: “Forwards win matches, backs decide by how much”; so obviously, the better your backs, the more tries you will score.

 

Hampden In The Sun - Edinburgh Were Over-Run

I WILL ADMIT – I struggled somewhat to stay awake during the third quarter of Sunday's 1872 Cup clash: at that stage it was already obvious that Glasgow Warriors would win this first leg.

OK Boan Venter's two late screams of rage offered Edinburgh a glimmer of hope for Saturday's second leg, at Scottish Gas Murrayfield, but, if you honestly think the Capital outfit can give Warriors a 19 point start and still win the whole thing – I'll have a pint of whatever you're drinking.

Back in the game's Amateur Era, the annual Inter-City Match was seen as an additional International Trial. Today's choc-a-bloc professional schedule means we no longer have space for Trials, but, given 38 full Scotland caps were on-duty among the 46 players who stripped; it stands to reason, with the Guinness Six Nations 2025 looming on the horizon, the person among the near 28,000 spectators inside Hampden Park paying the most attention was probably Scotland Head Coach Gregor Townsend.

Conveniently – to help Toony's selection thinking – the way the sides lined-up, he had 13 straight head-to-head match-ups involving Scotland-qualified players. OK, being from the West of Scotland, I may be a tad biased in favour of Warriors, but, from my vantage point in front of my television, I thought Warriors won the head-to-heads 13-0.

I would not say that any of those Edinburgh players who we consider First-Choice Scotland Players played their way out of the national side, but, they certainly have ground to make-up in Saturday's second leg.

I now turn to the other big talking point from Sunday's game – what did the rugby supporters make of Hampden? “The Old Lady” is a lot different from the slum I first entered over 65 years ago. Long gone are the rivers of urine running down Sommervill Drive – a common occurrence back in the old days of 130,000-plus crowds for the bi-annual clash with the Auld Enemy. Long gone too are the piles of empty bottles which, back in those days of deposit glass bottles, proved to be the source of some profit for the young gentlemen of the Soothside of the city.

But, those of us who have gone there in both the old days of the towering terraces and in more modern times, following the botched rebuild of the ground in the mid-1990s, fine ye ken, it was a poor renovation, done on the cheap. Thirty-years on, Hampden is clearly not fit for purpose.

The BTL forum on The Offside Line is always full of complaints about the facilities at Murrayfield, after every big game there – yet, for all its faults, Murrayfield is a lot better than Hampden; perhaps because, the SRU isd still to a degree run by people who have to face their public, when they go back to their clubs.

The High Heid Yins at Hampden are well-separated from the PBI of the Tartan Army and never have to answer for Hampden's inadequacies. Also, there might be a feeling: it's mainly thee Old Firm fans who go there and they wold probably wreck a half-decent stadium.

If Scotland was a proper Country, with (and I may be reaching for the Moon here) politicians who cared about their nation and its standing in the world, we would have a single National Stadium, built on a greenfield siter, somewhere more-central, with good transport links and modern spectator infrastructure.

Aye dream on, that aint gonna happen any time soon, and certainly never while all the meaningful power in in London. So, I suppose we are stuck between the slum that is Hampden and the soon to be slum – unless the SRU finances miraculously imporve – Murrayfield.

The BTL section of TOL made interesting reading post-match, the natives in the Capital are not happy bunnies. With the two Edinburgh football teams getting off the basement of the SPL, the timing of Sunday's debacle was not good for the rugby team. I suspect a difficult week around Murrayfield.

Finally on the subject of Sunday: I thought Hollie Davidson had a cracking game, such a shame she will be restricted to Assistant Referee dutis in the Six Nations, while inferior male officials get the whistle.

ON SATURDAY I watched the Sharks v Bulls United Rugby Championship clash from Durban, won on the back of some superb defence by a well-under-strength Sharks. One thing which struck me was, in the very-first scrum olf the game, the Bulls' pack nearly shoved the Sharks' eight back into the Indian Ocean. I fully expected Referee Morne Ferrera to award the Bulls a penalty. However, he called “scrum dominance” and allowed play to continue.

Sadly, in subsequent scrums, when the visiting pack was equally dominant, he reverted to officiating type and penalised the Sharks. I am not, at this stage, suggesting we re-write the Laws of the Game, but, I feel World Rugby would do the Game of Rugby Union Football a huge favour, if they made minor adjustments to their advice to Match Officials.

Instead of facilitating the search for scrum penalties. Should we not perhaps be taking steps to return the scrum to what it has always supposed to be: a means of restarting play after a minor breach of the laws has caused play to break down.

I would make it illegal to hold the ball in a scrum – other than at an attacking five-metre scrum. Scrum halves should be encouraged to play the ball as quickly as possible, to keep open play going. If this approach was adopted, we would not see clubs playing for scrum penalties and would have a more-fluid game.

 

The One About Squad Depth And Rotation

WELL, I don't think many of us saw Edinburgh's magnificent win over Bayonne, at The Hive, on Friday night coming; but, the victory was all the more-welcome, because the size of it was entirerly unexpected.

It is a known facet of European games, that you never quite know which version of any French club will turn-up on these shores on European nights. Every domestic league campaign is a marathon, but the race for the French title is perhaps Les Marathon Des Sables of such competitions. It goes on longer, is played over more-difficult terrain and the attrition rate is greater than for any comparable Championship.

Thus, those French teams also competing on the pan-Eurpean stage have developed a reputation for sending weakened teams to the away legs of European games. Mind you, British teams are now also indulging in wholesale squad rotations in Europe, so the fashion for fielding weakened teams is spreading.

Even without one or two of their bigger names, however, and Edinburgh's 40-point advantage at the final whistle not withstanding, Bayonne still had sufficient star quality to give the home side some awkward moments. But, one of the perhaps under-valued aspects of Edinburgh's play this season has been their defence, which was never better than during that final first half set, in time added-on for injuries.

One of my favourite books is George MacDonald Fraser's 'The General Danced At Dawn' – a fictionalised tale of th author's time as an officer in a Highland Regiment in the years immediately after World War II.

Part of the tale takes the Regimental football team on a tour of North Africa, during which a particularly glaiket winger, who is to an extent seen as: “No awe there”, after a heavy blow to the head suddenly turns into a combination of Stanley Matthews, Garrincha and Jimmy Johnstone. To become unplayable.

“Feed him, he's bewitched,” was the instruction from the Team Captain. Watching on TV on Friday night, I sensed Grant Gilchrist had given that self-same instruction to the other 13 Edinburgh players – in this case, to get the ball to Darcy Graham. On Friday night, Hawick's Finest was indeed bewitched, winning the Man of th Match award by the length of Hawick High Street.

I would not advocate wrapping him in bubble wrap and putting him in a cupboard out of harm's way, but, Sean Everitt has to continue to carefully manage Graham's appearances – we will need him firing on all cylinders come the Guinness Six Nations.

Might it be that, with Fitba in our Capital in the ICU at the moment, and Glasgow Warriors in such a rich vein of form, there is additional pressure on Edinburgh to perform at the moment. If so, on Friday night Everitt got a gtrerat response from some of the less-vaunted “Gunners”.

While I continue to regret the lack of front-line Scottish tight-heads behind Zander Fagerson, Englishman Paul Hill, on Friday night showed what a valuable recruit he has been. Then, when he went off, Javan Sebastian came on to seamlessly slot-in.

I'm a wee bit of a Sebastian fan, from his time at Ayr; while another of the Scottish-Qualified recruits to have passed through Millbrae, Marshall Sykes, again demonstrated the value of a big lump of a lock who never takes a backward step.

Elsewhere, the rise of Matt Currie continued; Tuipulotu Two again impressed, while Ross Thompson is growing into that ten shirt – before allowing Ben Healy to pilot the ship safely to harbour.

It was a very-satisfying win, such a pity it was Premier Sports' third-choice game for coverage, it deserved to be shown on a broader canvas.

I FIND MYSELF running a tad late on my weekend round-up this week – blame it on Number Three Grandson and his birthday long lunch on Sunday. This meant I missed the Toulon v Glasgow game and wasn't able to watch it until Premier Sport replayed it in full on Monday evening.

OK, in common with every other supporter of Warriors, I would far-rather I had had a victory to celebrate, but, to go to one of the real fortresses of French rugby and come within a missed conversion of a win – a conversion we would normally have expected the kicker to nail, wasn't a bad outcome.

The young guns in the Glasgow squad gained valuable experience and will be better for this outing, while Franco Smith's use of a “Bomb Squad” off the bench was another demonstration of the depth he has added to the Warriors' squad.

Not that long ago, if any of the three fully=professional squads: The National Team, Edinburgh or Glasgow went with a starting XV one-third of whom were not “First Choices”, the Rugby Uniion battalions of The Tartan Army were distinctly worried. Nowadays, Messers Townsend and Smith and to a lesser extent Mr Everitt have choices and can leave out players who were previously “Shoo-Ins” for a starting slot, since they have squad depth and options.

Our teams may not have the depth, of talent or pockets, of the likes of Toulouse, where oor ain Blair Kinghorn is one of four full-backs, each of whom is first-choice in that position for his national team, competing for the number 15 shirt. But they are building impressive depth elsewhere.

If you had offered anyone at Scotstoun other than the Head Coach, two points from the visit to Toulon, when the draw was made, they'd have bitten your hand off. Glasgow is in a good place in Europe right now.

Their next four games may not define Season 2024-2025 for them, but will definitely enhance the feel-good factor, for both the club and Scotland, if they can post even three wins out of four.

These are exciting times. I bet the Whats App messages among the naitonal squad will be good this week.

 

On Jobs For The Boys And Rugby Politics

ONE OF MY favourite bits of rugby writing is Max Boyce's hymn of praise to his former workmate in the Welsh coal mines – that great flanker Dai Morris. Max wrote: “The foreman calls him Mister, the children call him Dai”. In another stanza Boyce, who was naturally heavily-biased on behalf of his friend, summed-up Morris's contribution in a losing cause, when a combined Neath and Aberavon XV lost to the All Blacks. “Some there blamed the referee, some blamed you and I, we all blamed the committee, but no one there blamed Dai”. Morris did indeed hold an honoured place in local society.

Dai Morris went down the pit each day from Monday to Friday, just another collier, although in reality a time-served electrician. But, at weekends, he came to the surface and was a star, lauded around the world as he won 34 caps for Wales at a time when their national side was good, very-good. He retired from Rugby Union, but continued in ther day job until state retirement age; no nice little additional earner as a talking head on television, none of the other perks today's professional players appear to demand as their time at the coal face of the game ends.

Today's guys strike me as in a lot of cases approaching footballers' levels of entitlement. They are paid to play a game most of us played for nothing, then, when they retire, they expect somebody else to subsidise their life style to a degree. It's all too-easy for them it seems.

The latest version of this came this week, when Ronan O'Gara revelead, he would be open to an offer to coach an international side – but not Wales. Now to be fair to ROG, he has perhaps already done the hard yards, turning La Rochelle from also-rans to one of the top sides in Europe, if not the world. So, having done a difficult job once, we can maybe indulge him if he seeks an easier furrow to plough in the International game.

Yes, he is familiar with the pressures of the job, but, when he says his preference would be to coach England, France or Ireland, and ignoring Wales, I hae ma doots.

From my perspective, nobody with a modicum of common sense would go within a barge pole's length of the England job. Regardless of the sport: Cricket, Football or Rugby Union, coaching England is the ultimate poisoned chalice: having to match unrealistic England Expects levels with the demands of a volatile fan base, club bosses who despise the International game and a Rugby Football Union in which, though the personnel has changed, is still run by Will Carling's “57 Old Farts”.

The problem is much the same in France, and while ROG has adjusted well to life there, he would still be an outsider, were the French Federation to hand him the keys to the Coach.

 The Irish job is perhaps his best fit, although, being a proud Munsterman, he would be a bit of an outsider in Dublin. However, I kind of sense, ROG running Ireland would probably get them into at least that first Rugby World Cup semi-final. I sense a return to Dublin might be his best bet, if the Lions crush Australia in the Summer and the RFU decides on the back of that, to break the bank and recruit the English Dream Team of Andy Farrell and Sean Edwards.

But, why not Wales? Yes, at the moment, they can barely win a scrum or a line out, but, they have a lot of promising young talent coming through, and, under O'Gara's guidance, better days may be just around the corner. The guy who gets Wales back to winning Triple Crowns and Grand Slams, well, he's made for life – isn't that a challenge worth accepting?

IF REAL POLITICS is a dirty game, it pales into insignificance when confronted with the chicanery of Sporting Politics – and that's a fact. The suits who run the various world games bow to nobody when it comes to dark deeds and untruths.

In sport, as in all areas of life, it pays to follow the money, and that's why the several calls for a reintroduction of an SRU-run Sevens programme in the game up here's principal forum, the Below the Line comments in The Offside Line, will fall on deaf ears within the EH12 bubble. There's nae money in it, so The Junta is simply not interested.

If there was interest, and if a properly-structured Sevens programme could be introduced into Scotland, it could be a winner, but, between a distinct lack of interest inside Murrayfield and the forces of: “It's aye been” in ther country as a whole it isn't going to happen.

And suppose we did decide to reinvigorate our love affair with the short form which we invented and became almost Fijian-good at it, the sad political reality is, and I deliberately shout this:UNTIL SCOTLAND BECOMES AN INDEPENDENT NATION AGAIN, WE HAVE NOWHERE FOR OUR NATIONAL SEVENS TEAM TO PLAY.

Remember, we are hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2026; this is one of only two multi-sport games in which Rugby Union Sevens is played – and we don't have a spot for it in Glasgow – sporting politics again.

But, suppose we did decide to use the many virtues of Sevens as a means of developing out young talent, we would have to feed that talent into the Team Great Britain programme which participates in the World Rugby Sevens circuit and in the Olympics. But here again, we run into sporting politics.

The IOC (International Olympic Committee) runs the Olympic Games. Each member nation has its own Olympic Committee – in the United Kingdom's case, The BOC (British Olympic Committee). The BOC is constituted by representatives of the individual Olympic sports. Now most of these sports have specific British representation, although any specific sport might have different governing bodies for England, Northern ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are however, a couple of obvious stand-outs from this protacol.

For example, Curling, a medal-winning British sport, but played virtually only in Scotland, might reasonably be represented on the BOC by The Royal Caledonian Curling Club; lnly a handful of ice rinks in England, Northern Ireland and Wales offer curling and every British curling team at the Olympics has been an all-Scottish squad.

But no, the RCCC doesn't represernt Curling on the BOC, a specific body, British Curling, was formed to be this representative. There are, however, two sports which have bucked this trend for forming a specific multi-national body to look after that sport's interests in the BOC – Football within the BOC's orbit is run by England's Football Association, and Rugby Sevens is run by the Rugby Football Union.

Yes, they allow Dai and Jock to play (In Rugby Union Paddy does his own thing), but, the big, important decisions are taken where they have always been taken – in London, and in London thinking English always trumps Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh.

So, I am afraid, until Independence, or at the very least an uprising against all the big calls coming from London, Sevens in Scotland is going nowhere, because it has nowhere to go and the SRU has no say in how it doesn't get there anyway.

 

Keep The Heid Boys - Keep The Heid

LET ME take you back, not to the primeval mists of time, but to 1980 and the Moscow Olympic Games. A man from Edinburgh had just done what his wife – the formidable Margot had instructed, as her shouts of “Come on Al-Len” had carried Allen Wells to victory in the most-important race of the Games, the Men's 100 metres final. He was jogging round the track, savouring his lap of honour, all the time telling himself: “Keep the heid Son, keep the heid.”

Wells' mantra should be engraved on the chest of every Scottish athlete, whatever their discipline, because, as a nation we are somewhat inclined to get carried away at the slightest taster of sporting success.

So, while nothing tastes sweeter than a victory in which we have sent English visitors homeward to think again, I am not, as yet ready to book my trip to Cardiff for the final of this season's Investec Champions Cup.

There is, however, something about this Glasgow Warriors' squad which makes a Scottish heart swell. Sale Sharks is a good, well-coached side with somed outstanding talent in their ranks. Yes, Warriors benefitted from the international playing protocols which denied the visitors one or two of their England players, so they fell short, but, on the night, you still felt, even a fully-loaded Sales team would have struggled against this Glasgow squad.

It's an old cliché in team sports that defences win titles, and while the team's all-court attacking game catches the eye, Glasgow really triumphed on Saturday night because they shut out their visitors during the crucial third quarter. In that period Sale, with the elements in their favour, hit Glasgow with everything they had and scored nil point.

Then, when they finally did break through, Warriors immediately went back upfield for the unsung Scott Cummings to score the try which put the game out of reach.

Cummings is often overlooked when it comes to ranking the big locks in the game today, but, he quietly gets on with the donkey work, the leaping and carrying, the hard yards grunt work; for me, he has to be in the selection conversation around the 2025 Lions.

Man of the Match George Horne caught the eye with his hat-trick, including that solo effort up the right which had echoes of Edwards and Dupont about it. He saw off Gus Warr's challenge to his Scotland place – and Warr wasn't bad, on Saturday and goes head-to-head with Ben White this weekend. Sporting Glasgow loves its wee men and right now the wee Fifer is a giant presence.

Head Coach Franco Smith will rightly be again lauded for master-minding this victory, but, Defence Coach Peter Murchie also had a big hand in things. Warriors on Saturday night was a team with no failures. The big men were huge, the young guns blazed, it was a great night for Glasgow – now remember Warrior Nation: Keep the Heid.

FRIDAY NIGHT was one for a tough decision, as a fixture clash put Bath v La Rochell on Premier Sports 1, while Gloucester v Edinburgh was on Premier Sports 2 at the same time. However, a quick look at the programme guide ensured, I would not miss my weekly fix of the magician known as Finn Russell, since the Edinburgh game would be shown again in full on Saturday morning.

The Gallus One can do many things, but, wihout his trusty lieutenants, Ben Spencer and Ollie Lawrence, he was powerless to prevent proof of one or Rugby Union's oldest maxims – that forwards win games, as the French juggernaut rolled over the Bath pack.

Highlight of the night was probably Cameron Redpath squaring up to the massive Will Skelton. This incident had the English commentators fearing for Redpath's safety, but, as the excellent John Barclay commented: “Redpath's Scottish, Skelton's size would not bother him.”

WHEN I SAW the squad Sean Everitt had selected, I feared for Edinburgh at Kingsholm, but, in the end, they did bloody well to come away from a somewhat undistinguished game with a losing bonus point.

The thing is, Gloucester are a typical Gallagher Premiership outfit, grossly over-rated by the compliant English media, hell-bent on convincing the gullible English rugby public that their club, their players and their game in general is better than it is in reality.

Who knows, maybe if Everitt had sent out his big guns, Edinburgh would have won this one, I would certainly like to think they could. In reality, it was a poor game, contested by two bang average sides and, given how many journeymen and tyros they fielded, even in defeat, Edinbrugh probably took more from the game than did the victors.

FURTHER UP these ramblings of an ancient hack, I mention the way those dregs of what is left of “Fleet Street” love to talk-up English teams and sport. I should perhaps add here, we Scots are not immune from the disease.

Given how, in what is left of the once proud Mainstream Scottish Media, Sports Writer now means Purveyour of Propaganda Praising Rangers and Celtic, we are in no position to hold the moral high ground over our southern neighbours. But, I find myself laughing as I browse The Online Guardian this Sunday am.

The dear old Gruniad likes to think itself the last vestage of truth and integrity in a media landscape owned and ruled by media moguls, proudly selling itself as “A serious British Newspaper.” Aye Right! When “British” means “English”.

We all know, The Guardian began as The Manchester Guardian, so you might have thought, since Manchester-based Sale Sharks were playing in Glasgow on Saturday night, in a rather-important game in a pan-European competition, then that paper would have had a reporter at the match.

But, hardly surprise, surprise; they wax lyrical about Saracens beating The Bulls and Northampton Saints crushing Castres, but, of Glasgow beating Sale – narry a nurdle. Perhaps “Britain” now means the M4 and M1 corridors and that part of this United Kingdom beyond the M25 is largely a case of: “Here Be Dragons”.

 

It's Nae Loss Whit a Frien' Gets

JOHANN LAMONT, one of the many former Branch Managers of the British Labour Party in Scotland is perhaps best remembered for having rather a poor view of her fellow Scots' ability to run their own affairs. On reflection, considering one of the off-field Rugby Union stories of this week, Johann's view of the strange way we Scots think and interact has some substance.

The SRU has just revealed a pay-out of £250,000 to Ayr Rugby Club, towards ther club's ambitious upgrade of its Millbrae home. In a three-part development Ayr will:

• Build a new, wider access road to the Alloway ground

• Install a floodlit, all-weather pitch for community use

• Upgrade the clubhouse via a virtual rebuild to the current building, parts of which date back to the 18^th century

• Upgrade the floodlights and other infrastructure.

The whole project, which is on-going as I write, will cost upwards of £2 million, so, the SRU's financial input to the overall scheme amounts to less that one-eighth of the overall cost.

Yet, if you read some of the social media reaction, you would think Murrayfield had sold off their crown jewels and given the whole sum raised to Ayr.

“Money going to money” - “Looking after the big clubs to the disadvantage of smaller ones” - “poor use of scarce resources” - these ar just some of the comments I have seen.

I can think of a couple of other couthy Scottish sayings which come to mind – the first is: “Him, a kent his Faither”, which is a familiar Scottish take-down when unhappy with someone else getting some attention. The other, the one I prefer in this instance, is: “It's nae loss whit a frien' gets”.

Some 60 years ago, Ayr was a “semi-junior” club; they had one or two fixtures against the Establishment clubs, who were in the Unofficial Championship, but the club didn't have enough fixtures for that status. Neither did Ayr have a ground of its own, or a clubhouse.

Then Alastair McMillan, a local lawyer and no mean player as a centre three-quarter, was asked to handle the sale of the Millbrae Market Garden in Alloway. “Speedy” as he is still known to us veterans uninhibited by his status as Honorary President of the Ayr club, took a punt, and persuaded his fellow committee members to commit to making Millbrae the club's home.

[There is, by the way, an interesting video clip on You Tube, of just some of the work which the players themselves put into The Building of Millbrae.}

Since that decision was taken, Ayr has never looked back. By the end of the 1960s, they were in the Unofficial Championship and today they are arguably Scotland's leading club side.

They got help from the SRU along the way, but, most of Ayr's rise has been down to rolling up their sleeves and doing it themselves. A lot of the seed corn for the latest development came from “The Maconald Legacy” - a £3 million gift to the club from long-time sponsor Alan Macdonald, in memory of his late son Barry, who had played for Ayr.

But for that legacy, Millbrae would probably have been sold for housing and the entire club re-located to former home Dam Park Stadium, which they own and use as the base for Ayr's thriving youth section.

So yes, £250,000 is a fair bit of money to give to just one club, but what that money will do, as part of Ayr's wider ambitions, could well do more for the game of Rugby Union than perhaps ten £25,000 grants to smaller clubs.

It's a big grant, but, compared to the money Ayr has raised over the years to help themselves, it's a drop in the ocean.

EXCEPT WHEN commentating on England games – here he goes full-on “fan with microphone” - I have a lot of time for David Flatman. He knows his stuff, gives his opinion with conviction and, as befits a member of the FRDU – that's the Front Row Donkeys Union – he is an intelligent chap. “Flats” was on top form covering Bath v Exeter Chiefs, in the Gallagher Premiership on Saturday night.

He was spot-on, when he tagged the collision of heads which ended Chiefs' scrum-half Stu Townsend's match, and cost Ted Hill some stitches and a spell on the naughty chair. As Flats categorised it, this was: “A rugby incident”, the sort of unfortunate, accidental clash which will always happen in a contact sport such as Rugby Union.

But, between scared law-makers and some of the more-woke elements among the Rugby Union Media – a RUM lot at the best of times, every clash of heads, no matter how accidental, now demands forensic examination, with loud calls for yellow or red cards.

I honestly do not know what the answer is. Player Safety has to be a primary concern, the game's High Heid Yins are justifiably terrified of the impact of class actions around neurological damage to players. Perhaps there is something to be said for a twin track approach to the issue.

• Track One – drop the tackle height in the professional game, so that any contact above the sternum is a penalty. If that doesn't stop high tackles and head-on-head collisions, nothing will.

• Track Two – any head-on-head contact is a penalty and a yellow card, If the players and the coaches knew a yellow was coming, they would soon eliminate the vast majority of such collisions. In the professional club game, they could easily bring in the bunker referal system from the international game.

• And another thing, might there be a case for initiating a number of “Technical Offences” - you might include high tackles in this, with a different tariff for offending. It's above my pay grade to say what this tariff might be, but, I feel it is something worth considering.

   

   

   

  MY BIG PAL Gordon Brown came back from his reputation-making British Lions Tour to New Zealand in 1971 with a very-bad knee injury. His recovery kept him out of the game until the end of that year, when, from memory, he managed a couple of club games for West of Scotland, a couple for Glasgow, a game for Mickey Steele-Bodger's XV, then the two International Trials, before the 1972 Five Nations came along and he was back on the treadmill.

  Legend has it that, after another Lions Tour, the 1955 one to South Africa, Jimmy Greenwood, another Great Scot – who made his breakthrough on that tour – played a mere eight games the following season: four games for Scotland in the Five Nations, two International Trials, one game for the Barbarians and one game for his club, Dunfermline.

  Broon also had a great tale about playing for Mickey Steele-Bodger's XV against Cambridge University in 1971. This was the first chance the '71 Lions had had to get together since the end of the tour and a bit of catching-up had to be done. Broon recalls asking one of the Welsh Lions, who had changed clubs, what he was doing now: “Playing Rugby” was the replay.

  “No, what's the Day Job?” Broon pressed.

  “That's it – officially, I'm a public relations executive for the club's biggest sponsor, but, in reality, my job is to play rugby for the club.”

  That was 24 years before Rugby Union went open.

  Today, we have people obsessed with the club game, to the extent that in the BTL comments section of The Offside Line this week, we have Edinburgh fans insisting that the club's needs should come before those of Scotland.

  When are these neanderthals going to realise – the only level of Rugby Union which can generate the level of finance to keep the professional game going is International Rugby Union. That's the driver. If we cannot generate enough cash via the Scotland team to keep the Scottish Rugby Union going, then we will not have a game.

  It doesn't matter if Edinburgh are top of the BKT United Rugby Championship, or bottom, what matters is that their players in the Scotland squad are ready to rumble when the International come around. Having an international squad at peak readiness for the Six Nations is the only thing that matters, for the well-being of the game up here.

  If that means, the big guns sit out games and the club loses, sure it's disappointing, but, in the greater scheme of things, it means little.

  The trick is in getting squad rotation and player development right, something which Warriors, at the moment, are clearly doing better than Edinburgh.

   

WATCHING SALE v Leicester in the Gallagher Premiership on Sunday afternoon, I have a feeling their European clash with Glasgow this weekend might be a bit of a cracker – and I do feel, this is a game which Glasgow can win.

I was mildly surprised to see, the team at TNT Sport have caught up with me, and started to notice yet another incidence of creeping ignoring of the Law Book in the professional game – when they began to pay close attention to the position of the hookers' feet when throwing-in.

Virtually every hooker these days throws in from inside the park. Back in my day, a toe on the line was an offence, today, anything goes. And, don't get me started on squint throws-in, they are now becoming as squint as the scrum feeds.

A game which allows law-breaking to spread is a game in big bother.

 

An Interesting Weekend

THAT GLASGOW WARRIORS v Scarlets game in the BKT United Rugby Championship, round seven, was a potential banana skin for the Warriors. You might say they “won ugly”, but Warriors still took a game they might well have lost. An old Rugby Union chestnut says: “Forwards win matches, backs decide by how much.” On the night, the under-strength Warriors' pack stood up to be counted and that has to be a bonus for Franco Smith.

On a typically dreich Scotstoun evening, the match was at times error-strewn, with the Welsh visitors also doing a particularly good job in stifling the attacking verve of the home backs.

From a Glasgow perspective, the pluses came from the strong showing of the young Warriors' locks. Jare Oguntibeju and Alex Samuel. Oguntibeju made one or two early mistakes, but, he grew into the game as it unfolded and finished strongly. Jack Mann made light of his long absence, while the four hookers selection did not unduly hamper Warriors. Ben Afshar had another useful cameo off the bench.

Scarlets blitz defence unsettled the Warriors' back-line all game, although I felt the Welsh side were less-strictly refereed than the home side and could well have had more than the one yellow cards awarded against them.

More worrying for Warriors was the head injury which cost them the services of Adam Hastings, but Dunky Weir came on to use all his great experience to guide Warriors home.

Amazingly, Scarlets maintained their proud record of never having conceded a game to Warriors, at Scotstoun, via a bonus point, further proof of what a crucial victory this might in the long end, turn out to be.

A final thought. I have long believed, with the absence of relegation in the URC, our professional teams should be actively testing young Scottish talent, by playing them in more games. Friday night's win at Scotstoun demonstrated, if our kids are well-coached and trusted, they will meet the test. Let's believe more in home-grown talent.

For sure, if not required by Glasgow in Toulon the next day, quite a few of the younger Warriors will be on Emerging Scotland duty against Italy Under-23s, at The Hive on 14 December.

I DON'T QUITE know what to make of Edinburgh's victory over Benetton Treviso, at The Hive on Saturday night. Perhaps, had I been there, I would know for myself what effect the wind had on proceedings. But certainly in commentary, the big debate was: how many points was it worth?

Edinburgh, with first use of the elements, scored five tries in the firt period, a feat which the visitors matched once they had the use of the wind. At that point, it came down to goal-kicking, with the hosts one conversion up. But, to their credit, Edinburgh rallied and did what the visitors could not do, and score into the wind – grabbing the two tries which in the end proved crucial.

This win may yet be the making of Edinburgh's season. On Friday night, Franco Smith trusted his kids and got a narrow win. Twenty-four hours later, Sean Everitt sent out a fully-loaded team, against an under-strength visiting XV and got the result he wanted.

I don't think you can – courtesy of the conditions – read too-much into this result, so perhaps best to accept the outcome and move on.

Plus points for the Edinburgh Coach: the real Jamie Ritchie has come back over the past couple of weeks, which is great for his club and country. Grant Gilchrist too has had a good Autumn, while a couple of the young guns up front, Marshall Sykes and Ben Muncaster were also impressive.

The club has survived a bit of a crisis and it is looking good for the upcoming European games, let's hope they can build on this win and move forward.

CYNIC THAT I AM, I feel the 2025 Lions Tour has come at a very-good time for Brand Farrell. I get the impression, the Dream Team for the Rugby Football Union would be Andy Farrell as Head Coach, Sean Edwards as Defence Coach with Owen Farrell back as on-field director.

But, for this to happen, Andy has to decide, post-Lions Tour, not to go back to Dublin, Sean has to be shoe-horned out of what must be a good deal with the French Federation and Owen has to call fini after one season in Paris.

I reckon the Lions' Tour has come at a good time for Farrell Senior. On the evidence of Saturday's win over the Australians, one or two of the Irish stalwarts are either at the top of the hill, or have started on the downward slope. The first part of the re-build will fall into the lap of Simon Easterby, standing-in for Farrell, and, if he gets the new guys integrated with at least a Triple Crown, or even better a Six Nations win, it will make it easier to let Farrell go.

THE OTHER big game at the weekend was at Malleny Park, where Currie Chieftains did the other Arnold Clark Premiership clubs a big favour by halting Ayr's seemingly regal progression towards the title.

The pace-setters still have a two-point lead at the top, but, the fact Currie could beat them will galvanise the others and make the rest of the campaign that bit more interesting.

Obviously, as an Ayrshireman, who has worn pink and black in the past, I was disappointed at Ayr losing, but, during a conversation I had with him in the week leading up to the game, one of the Big Beasts of Millbrae admitted that he was worried about the trip to Malleny. He genuinely feared that Currie could halt the Ayr juggernaut, and his fears proved correct.

I have a lot of time for the guys at Currie, I am pleased for them. I am also pleased for everyone at Poynder Park, after Kelso's morale-boosting annexation of the Bill McLaren Shield, which they ripped from Watsonians' grasp at the weekend.

The Premiership is now virtually split into three parts: Ayr, Heriot's, Watsonians and Currie look likely to be contesting the end-of-season play-offs. Melrose, Glasgow Hawks, Hawick and Selkirk appear safe in mid-table, leaving Edinburgh Academical, Kelso, Marr and Musselburgh to fight for the one remaining place in next season's slimmed-down top-flight. Wins such as Saturday's could be the survival boost Kelso will require.