Status Quo - Side Two

AS I was saying in my last post (scroll down and you'll see), Scottish rugby stands on the cusp of a new system which just might work - but only if everyone, clubs and Union, gets their act together. If they do, we could be set for a brighter future.

There was an interesting piece by young Ferguson in The Scotsman this morning, about London Scottish, the awkward cousin of Scottish rugby. Scottish has been a major player within the SRU for well over a century and certainly, in the amateur days a move to Richmond Athletic Ground was often the final step before a first cap - then came that fatal flirtation with professionalism, which went tits-up and the grand old club was demoted nine divisions.

But, they've fought back and are now two games away from promotion to English rugby's Championship, the level below the Premiership. I hope they make it and if they do, this offers a welcome lifeline to the SRU, as, if they can co-operate properly with the Scottish officials, they could not only get more Scots into the English Premiership as players, but, maybe unearth some additional sponsorship.

It is not perhaps fully appreciated up here just how high-up some Scottish members are in that complex organism "the City", but, like old-time mafioso - the Scottish guys are "connected", in their case to serious money.

Wee aside here, I heard the tale of one Watsonian who was: "something in the city" and whose Saturday afternoon relaxation from making billions was to trot along to Richmond to socialise with Hamish, Douglas, Hector, Lachlan and the other Edinburgh boys who controlled so much of the money awash in the square mile.

Our Watsonian was not only big in London Scottish, he was an elder at St Columba's Pont Street and on the executive of "the London Scottish", THE club for exiles in the Sudetenland - in other words, he was a major capo in the Scotia Nostra.

He got a call a couple of nights before the LS Burns Supper, from the High Heid Yin, telling him he had placed "Alex" a friend from Manchester at his table at the event and would he look after him.

On the night, "Alex from Manchester" was introduced to the Watsonian, who immediately showed his lack of interest in events outwith rugby and the city by asking "Alex": "Tell me Mr Ferguson, what exactly do you do up in Manchester".

If London Scottish RFC and through them the SRU can really get guys like our Watsonian on-side, get more good young Scots into top-flight professional rugby and maybe syphon-off some city millions, I'd say it was win-win all round for the game.

So, it's everyone behind Scottish in their push back to the top.

I'm off to Millbrae today for the final match in what has been, a good season for the club game - Ayr v Currie. The match isn't that important, but I hope Ayr get a good crowd to say farewell to Damien "Skippy" Kelly, their iconic captain, who plays his final game before returning to Australia next week.

He's been good for Ayr and good for Scottish rugby, he will leave a great gaping hole, filling it will be a major task for Jock Craig, Billy McHarg and Kenny Murray, the three wise men of Alloway.

Status Quo - Rocking On

I LIKE it - that's my snap reaction to the proposals for league reconstruction which have been announced this morning. Of course, announcing them and implementing them are two entirely different things, but, this, to me, is the way ahead.

I particularly like the proposals for a much smaller truly National League from season 2012-13, but accept that one will be harder to sell. The trouble with Scottish Rugby has long been, there are some clubs which seem to believe they have a divine right to be "top" clubs and will do all they can, except maybe work harder on the park, to remain thus.

For instance 19 of the top 32 clubs in the last season of the old Unoffical Championship - season 1972-73, are still top 32 clubs today; 5 of the top 12 clubs in that season were top 12 this season and 8 of the top 16 clubs in 1973 are top 16 clubs this season. It would almost leave you alongside Burns's Holy Wullie in the ranks of the believers in pre-destination.

The top 32 in the final Unofficial Championship, in descending order, were: Boroughmuir, Gala, Hawick, Langholm, Jordanhill, Edinburgh Wanderers, Watsonians, West of Scotland, Dunfermline, Glasgow HSFP, Gordonians, Melrose, Leith Accies, Ayr, Glasgow Accies, Hillhead HSFP, Kelso, Selkirk, Edinburgh Accies, Trinity Accies, Hutchesons, Jedforest, Broughton FP, Heriot's FP, Musselburgh, Perthshire, Aberdeen GSFP, Royal HSFP, Kelvinside Accies, Edinburgh University, Stewart's College FP and Glasgow University.

Now, I know the unofficial championship was decided on a per-centage of points won basis and that not every team played every other team; but, you couldn't finish high up the table without playing a good few of the teams around you.

From that final pre official leagues season, we have lost Langholm, Edinburgh Wanderers, Leith Accies, Trinity Accies, Broughton FP, Royal High and the two Universities. Glasgow HSFP, Accies and Kelvinside Accies are now part of the Hawks set-up, Hillhead and Jordanhill have combined, Hutchesons is now part of GHA while Stewart's have since combined with Melville College FP.

So, in 38 seasons of official leagues, only Currie, Dundee HSFP, Stirling County, Peebles, Biggar, Falkirk, Kirkcaldy, Whitecraigs, Hamilton, Ardrossan Accies, Cartha-Queen's Park, Howe of Fifre, Dalziel, Haddington and Morgan of the current top 32 have come through the ranks. There have been other clubs who have enjoyed varying lengths of exposure to the top flight - Kilmarnock had a lengthy spell vying with, and often out-performing near-neighbours Ayr, the likes of Portobello FP and Wigtownshire rose and fell like Guy Fawkes rockets; Highland enjoyed a spell in the sun.

Near-neighbours Broughton FP, Leith Accies and Trinity Accies are now playing in the East League and common sense if not history might suggest an amalgamation would better serve rugby in that part of the capital, but, by and large the face of Scottish club rugby has not changed all that much since the days before official leagues. The other clubs to drop out of our 1973 table are all still National League clubs, or are amalgamated into "new" clubs who hold that status.

However, it will surely change more than ever if (one shudders to say when) the new proposals for fewer clubs competing nationally comes in in 2012.

A few national league teams, under-pinned by a lot of regional league sides strikes me as the ideal way forward. Something similar exists in Scottish hockey and that works.

Now, if the SRU could get the finances sorted out once and for all and start developing modern stadia, a lot smaller than Murrayfield, which could be used by the national league clubs and also by the two professional clubs, I could really see Scottish rugby flourishing - except, the lone-established Scottish trait of fighting amongst ourselves when we don't have external enemies (usually English) to fight with, could still derail progress.

De-centralise Now

MOST days, at around noon - my "you've got mail" warning on my computer goes haywire, as the daily quota of Magners League press releases come in. Most are immediately trashed, being by and large from the four Welsh or four Irish teams - the SRU, as in everything else, goes by the credo: tell them as little as you can get away with.

But, just occasionally, one comes in from outwith Scotland which is worth reading and that happened yesterday, when the Ospreys announced a new coach for Swansea. This demonstrated the major difference between how the Irish and Welsh deal handle the relationship between clubs and regions and how the SRU mis-handle the same relationship.

In Ireland and Wales the four Magners League teams are at the top of a distinct pyramid, under-pinned by their relevant regions. Now I know there is some disquiet within Welsh rugby at the regionalisation of their game and that the way the clubs were divided-up as feeders to the four regional sides hasn't met with universal approval - but, I get the impression the IRU and the WRU are at least trying to make the clubs continue to feel part of things far more and far better than their opposite numbers at Murrayfield.

Go onto the Ospreys, Scarlets, Blues or Dragons, Connacht, Leinster, Munster or Ulster websites and you will find links to club rugby within their regions. Of course, for all I know, it could be PR bluster, but you get the impression that the guys running the Irish and Welsh regions really care about what is happening in the club game.

Go onto the Edinburgh or Glasgow sites and it's quite clear, they don't give a toss about the Scottish clubs - they are sub-branches of Murrayfield and what goes on further down the Scottish rugby food chain doesn't really matter to them.

Until, that is, events such as the World Cup.

Big news this week, Melrose's Scott Wright was to be given his chance with Glasgow. Maybe I'm an old cynic but - good player though Wright is and good season though he's had - he's 25, suddenly he's being: "given his chance" at Glasgow, where the two stand offs already in situ, Jackson and Weir, are both younger. Of course, the way things stand, Glasgow's resources are going to be severely strained in the build-up to and during the World Cup, when almost an entire first XV will be away with Scotland.

The club hasn't the budget to recruit seasoned professionals to fill-in, so, suddenly the SRU turns to the clubs, whom they have treated very badly all these years.

Then, when the big guns come back, the guys such as Wright, who have filled the gaps, will be released back to their clubs. It's pathetic.

Maybe if the SRU would be realistic and put in place proper diaglogue and links between the two professional clubs and the top amateur clubs, things might be different. Do it as they do it in Ireland and Wales.

Ah! but that would mean surrendering some control from the centre to the sub-branches and that would never do for the control freaks within Murrayfield, would it?

Grasping The Nettle

BACK in 1995, when rugby went professional, it didn't need Mystic Meg to forecast trouble ahead for Scotland - anyone with any even remote experience of the SRU could have seen that they'd get it badly wrong.

However, I don't think even John Laurie's Private Fraser, in whose face the wind was ever blowing, could have seen them continuing to get it wrong for over a decade and a half.

So with almost all the ts crossed and is dotted - let's hope the great and good of Scottish rugby can start to plan a better way ahead, because, the season now ending has been yet another disheartening one.

PETER Wright normally has a lot of sense to speak when he has a microphone or a written media dictaphone thrust under his nose and he was again "good copy" after seeing his Hawks beaten into fourth spot in the Premiership by Currie on Saturday.

"Had we won it would have been daylight robbery" - you don't often get that from a losing coach and never from a losing football one. But where Wright really had something pertinent to say was when he moved on to the effect of the British & Irish Cup on club rugby.

This competition has, in just two seasons, had the sort of impact on the club game that it took European competition in football more than a decade to make. Now the top club sides realise, there is a wide world outside Scotland and hey - we can compete.

Bristol are in the final this year - they only just got past Ayr in the quarter-finals and everyone at Ayr will tell you, the match-up was such, had the match been at Ayr, the pink and blacks would have won.

There is nobody at Currie who doesn't think, with a wee extra shove, they cannot emulate Ayr and reach the knock-out stages next season, while Wright has learned from the likes of Dean Kelbrick and Nicky Campbell, who guested for Ayr this season, that Hawks too could step-up to the B&I mark.

Chuck Chalmers also insists, it was their exposure to the higher stresses of the B&I Cup this season which, as much as anything elses helped end Melrose's long wait for national title number ten.

But, Wright has also identified a potential risk of the pan-British Isles competition for second tier clubs - the way it could lead to the three qualifiers hoovering up the available talent.

"B&I Cup qualification will make player recruitment easier" he admits. In football, 'twas ever thus. The B&I Cup simply (hopefully) helps speed the arrival of a pyramid system in Scottish rugby.

Put simply, there are too-many Scottish clubs playing nationally, spending too-much of the little money they have on such fripperies as coach travel to the other end of the country.

We don't need all these Scotland-wide leagues. Get back to regionalisation, bring back local derbies and watch rugby flourish.

If we have one national team, two full-time professional sides, eight or ten semi-professional sides playing in a national club competition and amateur clubs playing below them in district leagues, we would have a ladder up which ambitious players could climb, while providing more-meaningful competition for the play-for-fun guys who are the backbone of the game.

It's the way ahead. The semi-pro clubs should be charged with young player development within their area, but perhaps limited in the number of players they can register, with the excellent associate club status more formalised.

The ambitious and talented players could still move up, but the allegations of poaching which sometimes sour inter-club relationships would hopefully become a thing of the past.

But come on SRU. Leave your ivory tower, get out and about and give us a lead, but, please, don't, as you have done for the past 15 years, insist you're the only guys that know how to run the game - because you've proved you don't know shit.

FINALLY - teeth firmly gritted: Well done to everyone at Melrose on your Championship victory.

What's That Skippy - Two More Games And You're Off

WELL done to Ayr, retaining the Scottish (Premier) Cup by narrowly defeating Melrose. Condolences to Chuck Chalmers and his 'Rose squad, who made Ayr battle all the way and playing their full part in what was, by all accounts a terrific final.

All the serious Scottish papers had their main rugby writers covering the match, so one or two guys who, like their counterparts in football coverage only ever see the Big Two, had their eyes opened by the quality of the rugby on offer in the club game up here.

Well done too young Mark Bennett, the youngest players on the field, for picking-up the Man-of-the-Match award in his first final. Young Mark is clearly going right to the top and if I was Andy Robinson I'd think seriously about taking him to the World Cup in October. Not that I am suggesting he should be in the playing squad, but, back in the day, when the Scottish football team used to qualify for the major finals, coaches such as Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown used to take one or two of the national age group squad members along as "gofers" - so they had experience of a big tournament. No harm in taking Mark then, I venture.

Now the focus switches to the Greenyards and what is in effect a Championship decider between 'Rose and Ayr. It is an intriguing match to call. OK, as "Skippy" Kelly the Ayr captain accepts, the Greenyards is probably the toughest place in Scotland to travel to in a "must win" match. But, Ayr have beaten Melrose in both their previous encounters this season, in spite of lengthy spells either at 14 men or dug-in on their own line, in both matches.

There just might be a niggling feeling: "We cannot beat this lot", in the back of the collective Melrose minds. But, very few gave them a chance against Hamilton in last weekend's Melrose Sevens Final and they came through.

This will be a fantastic match and there haven't been too many in Scottish club rugby history with as much riding on the outcome.

Everyone at Ayr is determined to send Skippy off back home to Oz on a high. It might not be pretty, but, it will be gripping.

My sympathies go out to Brenda Craig, long-suffering wife of Ayr's Director of Rugby, Big Jock Craig. He'll be even mair crabbit than usual this week in the build-up.

What odds too, "Creamy" Telfer turning up at Melrose training this week for a few of his well-chosen swear words with the squad.

Usual raspberry too, to BBC Scotland Sport - for virtually ignoring the cup final. They'll probably give the same negligible level of build-up to the Greenyards game - the SRU should maybe get Paul McBride QC to mention it, then the game will get a mention.

Attracting Flies to a Picnic

I HAVE touched on this before, but I despair for the SRU's selling of the game in Scotland. Graham Law, their Head of Media, is one of the good guys, as befits a former Scotsman Rugby Correspondent, but he's in what I like to call the John Greig position - carrying a great institution when surrounded by pygmies.

Mind you, there are guys in high places within both Murrayfield and Hampden, who couldn't get elected dog catcher in a poor year in a one-horse town in one of the "fly over" states in the USA.

Until the SRU gets its act together and realises there is more to Scottish rugby than a few FP clubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh and those dying borders towns with 5000 of a population and five surnames, the better.

If they cannot persuade the BBC in Glasgow that fitba isn't the only team game in the world and that Scottish rugby, below international level, has a story to tell - then they might as well shut up shop.

So, Fraser McKenzie is the next player to leave for fresh pastures. Will the last professional player to leave Edinburgh or Glasgow remember to put out the lights as he goes. It's getting gey depressing these days.

TODAY is Cup Finals Day at Murrayfield. The pink and black hordes will arrive in numbers from Ayr, Hawick YM will bring a few, ditto Melrose, but it will not be the all-day rugby fiesta it could be. However, let's not be downcast - enjoy your day folks and have fun, but remember, it's only a game.

I HAD to laugh this week, there is a suggestion going the rounds in England that the next Lions coach ought to be appointed if not now, then straight after the World Cup, so the Lions are properly-prepared for their next tour, to Australia in 2013.

I realise rugby is professional now and the guys have to be paid - which does cost a lot, but come-on. A coach in place in 2011 for a tour 18 months later.

Get real, you can bet the rugby writers of the Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, Times and Sunday Times and Sky's commentary team will all solemly sit down post-RWC 2011 and pick their Lions squads - which will bear little resemblance to the party which gets on the aircraft for Oz in 2013.

Just before that party leaves, they will again convene and select their Test XV, which will be nothing like the team which takes the field for the first Test and that XV will be nothing like the team which leaves the field at the end of the final Test.

It's a rule of Lions Rugby - expect the unexpected, twas ever thus. Nobody had heard of Dickie Jeeps or Tony O'Reilly when they left for South Africa in 1955 - they came home legends. Ditto Mighty Mouse McLauchlan, Sean Lynch or Broon Frae Troon in 1971. More recently Alan Tait was supposed to be a Dirt Tracker in the midweek team in 1997, or on the other hand, Euan Murray was supposed to be the Test tight head on the last tour.

Lions squads evolve, then evolve again as the tour progresses. The Lions don't need a coach 18 months before the tour. And right now, the favourite to be that coach is Martin Johnson.

Lions Legend, check; great captain, check; great coach, not yet. In fact, given the English press's track record, after the men in white fail to win RWC 2011, you may find the great man under pressure to hold onto his job. His iconic status has given MJ an easy ride thus far; the hack pack will turn if England don't at least make the final.

No, rather than seeking a coach too soon, if I was Andy Irvine, Gerald Davies, Sir Ian McGeechan and the other icons of the game who oversee the Lions, I'd be getting things sorted out so that the Lions run the Olympic Sevens squads in 2016 and beyond and in the process, in purely selfish terms, sorting out the pecking order for the place on the British Olympic Association's National Olympic Committee which rugby will be due - all that jet set travel and all those five star hotels which are the lot of an IOC delegate - you've got to go after it lads.

Heading For The Abyss

BRIAN Kennedy, the Scots millionaire who owns Sale Sharks, has been widely-quoted in the papers today, with regard to the current economic situation in the English Premiership - whereby the on-going losses within that league are being borne by him and a clutch of his fellow millionaires. He points out that, if one or two were to walk away, the whole house of cards could collapse.

I get the feeling one or two of Will Carling's 57 Old Farts would love that. I recall how, back in the 1970s, when the SRU stunned the world by inaugurating rugby's first organised league set-up, the RFU looked at it. Their suggestion was to re-organise England's then exciting and crowd-pleasing County Championship into a sort of regional thing.

Just as Wales and Ireland later re-organised their clubs into powerful regional sides, with the introduction of professionalism, then, decades before, England wanted the likes of Bath, Bristol and Gloucester to become The South West. Coventry and Moseley would have become the basis for a West Midlands team, with Northampton, Leicester and Loughborough Colleges the basis for an East Midlands team.

Broughton Park, Waterloo, Fylde and Sale would have fed into a Lancashire side, while across the Pennines Headingley, Morley, Wakefield and Roundhay would have been the basis for a Yorkshire team and Gosforth, Percy Park and so forth would have become Newcastle.

To a certain extent, professionalism did make Leeds Carnegie a Yorkshire select, and Sir John Hall's money and Rob Andrew's drive built Newcastle, but, by and large the club structure was so-strong in England the regions plan never had a chance.

Today, on the face of it and given the noise Sky and News International makes about it, the Premiership is where it's at in rugby. Aye Right.

But, even if the numbers are slightly less eye-watering, like its football equivalent, the English rugby Premiership survives on the whim of the club owners and if they have to tighten their belts, it could all come tumbling down.

So, let's hear it for the Celtic Unions, who realised that because they were smaller and poorer than the English, they had to take responsibility for professional rugby. The Scarlets, or Munster or Edinburgh will not stand or fall on the whims of rich men.

The trick in Scotland, and it's one we are nowhere near solving than we were in August 1995 is - how do we build a sustainable professional game without making it unworkable through the dead hand of centralisation?

Nationalisation and centralised control has never worked. It aint working with Scottish rugby.

Interesting point: Brian Kennedy is Scottish, he's rich, he loves rugby and he owns and runs a professional rugby club. The fact he does this in England rather than Scotland demonstrates what small fish we are in rugby's pond and what control freaks we have in charge at Murrayfield.