Oh Ruck!!

FORTY years ago, Ian McLauchlan got on an aircraft to New Zealand as back-up loose-head prop in a British Lions touring party, Gordon Brown accompanied him, as a back-up lock forward.

They returned to Scotland as "Mighty Mouse" and "Broon frae Troon" and life was never to be the same for the two Ayrshiremen. Big Broon, sadly, was taken from us far too soon, but the Mouse still roars and will have to roar again in a week's time, when he presides over the SRU annual meeting at Murrayfield.

With no Chief Executive, the two professional sides under-performing, changes, and not universally-popular ones, mooted for the club game, oh yes, and a World Cup in New Zealand on the horizon, Tarbolton's favourite son is facing just the sort of encounter from which he never shied away as a player. If there was one guy I'd want steering the SS SRU through the present troubled waters it would be the wee man.

Scottish Rugby HAS to change, there is no alternative - we simply cannot go on as before. Gordon McKie has bitten the bullet, most in the game wanted him gone, they have had their wish.

But, the problem facing McLauchlan and the others within Murrayfield's corridors of power is: is there anyone better out there, and if there is, will be sign-up?

We have fannied about for 15-years since professionalism, now we need to stop doing this, stop fighting among ourselves and start putting Scotland first and putting it right.

I HAVE long pondered over the merits and demerits of Sir Clive Woodward. Is he, as he seemed after England's 2003 World Cup triumph - the man with the answers when it comes to rugby, or is he, as he has been portrayed since the 2005 Lions debacle - a power-mad control freak who cannot stop micro-managing and stifles creativity and free thinking?

His background, English-born, shunted north to live in Corstorphine at an early age, then schooled at HMS Conway, a place which, if not quite sodomy and the lash, was geared to producing the men who ran the navy, before becoming the flair player in a Leicester team which wasn't the prettiest. On then to coaching at Bath and with England, making acquaintances (he apparently doesn't do friends) and enemies and equal numbers along the way. A top psychologist could probably get a couple of books out of SCW alone.

Now the internal debate between the NBWs and the ABWs within Twickenham has claimed another victim, John Steele. (NBW/ABW - nobody/anybody but Woodward). And does SCW himself do anything to stop the turmoil - nope. Very strange man, (SCW - self-centred Woodward anyone?)

Steele, if he could be enticed north, just might be the man to sort out Murrayfield by the way.

Ee Lad There's Trouble at t' Mill

IN A year during which the SFA "turkeys" can be persuaded to vote for Christmas and implement the changes which will lose a few of them their nice wee sinecures, soft seats in the main stand and access to the better purveys under the posh seats, the SRU's timing in allowing details of their own wee internal stushie to leak out is yet another example of Scotland's top rugby men dropping the ball under pressure.

CEO McKie has hardly endeared himself to the punters since taking-on the top job, others, more financially savvy than I have told me he's done a good job in reducing the fiscal deficit - problem is, he ought to be doing more to grow the game in Scotland. Also, as I have said before, there are some in high-powered jobs within Murrayfield who would struggle to be voted in as dog catcher in Hicksville in one of the "fly-over" American states in a bad year.

McKie is, apparently, a paper tiger and as anyone with knowledge of national organisations will tell you; if you appoint a paper tiger to the top job, you end up with lots of paper tigers and few real ones. What the SRU needs is someone in there who can lead rugby towards a landscape where it is closer to football in public esteem and interest. We need a salesman, not a cost accountant.

Just about the only people who think that Murrayfield's corporate body is the right management agency for Scotland's professional teams is - Murrayfield's corporate body. The pro teams are like Soviet collective farms, plenty of people on the pay roll, not much being produced.

We can only hope things improve after the agm, later this month and certainly as the proposed changes to the club game - if implemented - kick-in. But, right now, we are in deep doo-da and should maybe stop digging for a wee bit.

SCHADENFREUDE - German concept, much-loved by the Scots, Irish and Welsh, whenever the English muck-up. And, let's face, the RFU have mucked-up big style over this Performance Director job, which is, or maybe isn't, going to Sir Clive Woodward.

Woodward is a sort of well-behaved Neil Lennon, he splits opinion wonderfully. I have to admit, his autobiography 'Winning' is one of the best sports books I've read and his description of how he turned serial-under-achievers England into World Champions is a terrific blue print for any newly-appointed national coach.

However, his stewardship of the 2005 Lions in New Zealand is the definitive how not to, turning him from super manager into one of those blimpish British generals given a bloody nose by the natives in the days of Empire.

It is uncertainty as to which Woodward will return to Twickenham which has as much as anything caused the stushie within HQ which cost John Steele his job this week.

Given the London Scottish connection, should McKie be pushed/dragged screaming/persuaded out of office, if we could afford him - might not Steele be a good call as replacement - it worked ok with Andy Robinson.

APPARENTLY Andy Robinson has lit a fire under Johnny Beattie, whose place in the World Cup 30 is far from certain. Cannot see it myself - form is transatory, class is permanent and the Killer Bees, Beattie, John Barclay and Kelly Brown ought to be our first-choice breakaway trio in New Zealand. We have got few enough class acts that we could leave one at home.

Football's Universal Confederation Kicking Off For Football

FUCKOFF - That's my idea for a logo for a new world governing body for football. Catchy, to the point, says what most of us fans think about the carry-on in Zurich this week, which saw Sepp Blatter re-elected as the Godfather of world football.

If some of my more-hysterical, ie English, colleagues among the fans with lap-tops are to be believed, right now, Sepp is probably striding around a massive planning table in his private lair high in the Alps, looking through the rocket-proof glass at the world below him and muttering: "Unt now, for zhu Engerland, ze days of empire unt global influence are over - unt do not sink ze Scots vill save zhu zis time".

Such time-honoured institutions as the four Home Nations's divine right to individual places on IFAB, the International Football Board, who are the custodians of the Laws of the Game, their similarly divine right to have a FIFA vice-president, these are now under real threat. Jack Warner, the long-time number one threat to these nice little earners for some may be training with the reserves and youths right now, but he hasn't been given his free transfer just yet.

If I was Jim Boyce, the Ulsterman who has only just inherited that British vice-president's seat, I wouldn't get too comfortable. He might be back walking the Shankill rther than riding down it in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes fairly soon.

But, Blatter, if he should decide to have his revenge in this world rather than the next, will be unable to do anything before the IFAB meeting later this year - that is the FA and SFA's chance to build bridges, sort things out and if they are serious, start mucking-out football's increasingly-ranced international byre. That said, before they set-to on this, they might like to sort out their own sorry domestic messes.

I refuse to believe the really big football nations are all happy with Blatter; certainly, some (many?) of these nations are deeply and perhaps rightly mistrustful of the English as well - but, the likes of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Brazil are in the tent pissing out, which is a more comfortable position than England and Scotland's one of out of the tent, pissing in.

Do we have a footballing politician capable of protecting Scotland's interests at FIFA while helping broker the necessary and overdue changes?

The time-honoured situation saw SFA presidents leave office and move onwards and upwards onto the FIFA/UEFA gravy train - which puts George Peat about to board.

Aye well - FUCKOFF right enough.

2001 - A Crowd Estimate

MANY thanks to my old mate Roddy Forsyth, for the above line, which I have shamelessly borrowed from his Daily Telegraph report on Scotland's 3-1 Carling Nations Cup win over the Welsh, in Dublin on Wednesday night.

The ever-sharp Roddy got the idea from the fact 'Also Sprake Zarathustra' or the theme from 2001 - A Space Odyssey was playing as the teams took the park in an Aviva Stadium which looked like a green-painted Ibrox Park in the early 1980s: you recall the joke - they had discovered a design fault, the seats faced the pitch; as the Bears voted with their feet and refused to turn-up to watch a Rangers team which could barely win a corner.

At least two batallions of the Tartan Army made it through the volcanic ash to Dublin, with a third batallion due there for Sunday's Carling show-down with the Republic. (the Tartan Army v the Green Army, in Dublin - that has to be a wet dream for the Guinness marketing department).

I believe this quadrangular tournament can be a good thing, if they get the format and marketing correct. I don't think it can merit using the really big stadia - the Aviva, the three big Glasgow grounds or the Millennium Stadium and, for sure, no British tournament can work properly unless the Celtic Fringes get a chance to have a kick at "the Common Enemy" - you know, Them, Ingerlund.

The timing is also wrong, at the end of the ever-stretching domestic season, we are all footballed out. The Nations Cup could be "a Gunnell" - not pretty, but it can run, but I feel it needs a make-over.

Still, good to see the Scots scoring goals, albeit, as was the case against Norther Ireland in February, at the expense of a poor Welsh side.

MICHAEL Fry, not a journalist I have ever thought of as a fitba man, has penned a very interesting piece in this morning's Scotsman about the Scottish Government's proposals for a crack-down on sectarian behaviour at football matches.

Fry makes some good points, which I hope our MSP's take on board. He also reitterates a thought which I have had myself. After the Old Firm Scottish Cup replay, the UEFA fine on Rangers, the Hearts v Celtic game and the BBC documentary of recent weeks, a band-wagon is rolling to the effect: "something must be done". If there is one thing politicians hate it is a band-wagon rolling without them on board, so they are all scrabbling to put in their pennyworth.

"El Chooky" Salmond wants legislation against sectarianism on the statute book before the new season, which kicks-off in about eight weeks. Our glorious leader has I fear forgotten - law passed in a hurry is generally bad law.

Scotland is still, in many ways a tribal society, particularly in West-Central Scotland. The "Proddies" hate the "Papes", both hate the "Pakis" - heck, in some parts of Ayrshire, Fife and the Lothians, marrying someone from the neighbouring village is still seen as founding "a mixed marriage". In a lot of Scotland, a white girl seen with a black boy is risking extreme censure - we can still be a narrow-minded wee nation, look how the shit hit the fan this week when the General Assembly debated gay ministers.

We've got a lot of problems still, in this 11th year of the third millennium - but nothing gets us more-aereated than the followers of two football teams fighting a (mainly verbal - let's be honest) battle about religion and politics in Northern Ireland. I accept there is some low-level copy-cat behaviour around some other clubs, but the main problem concerns just two teams, whose management will do as little as they can get away with in sorting-out their followers - since sectarianism sells.

We don't need fresh legislation - all it takes is for the SPL and the SFA to call-in the chairmen and chief executives of the two (three if we include Hearts) clubs and tell them: "Our match delegates will be listening, just one instance of offensive chanting at your matches and you will be docked however many points you win in that game." The football authorities should also list what are "offensive" songs and chants - starting with any of the Irish political and religious "folk songs" - these have hee-haw to do with Scottish football.

The clubs then have to crack-down, starting with their official supporters clubs, warning them "We are listening, we will pin-point where the singing and chanting is coming from, and if it's from an area where your members are, no tickets".

By this method, the decent fans would self-police and in very short order the lunatics who were unwilling to change would be chased from our game. What happened thereafter is a government problem, but football could at least say "We've cleaned-up our mess, now you clean-up yours". Simples.

SO Jack Warner and yon big Arab frae Qatar are allegedly on the take - haud me back, ah never kent.

Aye right - when, in one of the most-gloriously indiscreet interviews in the history of sport, back in 2007, John McBeth made a few pertenent observations about some of the people he was set to deal with as the new British vice-president of FIFA, his reward was to be roundly abused by a highly-affronted Mr Warner, Sepp Blatter and the others of FIFA's elite. McBeth, hardly the epitome of charismatic leadership, but for all that a true football man whose dedication to Clyde was most-laudable, was suddenly declared unsuitable for the corridors of power in Zurich, he was dropped like a big stone and England's Geoff Thompson almost fell over his own feet in his haste to get onboard the Zurich gravy train.

McBeth went as far as he legally could in sign-posting Warner as a crook, but no, to Thompson and the FA he was one of the first gentlemen of football. Fast forward four years, Warner in the interim having at the very least lied to the English about his voting intentions towards the 2018 World Cup and when another of the FIFA blazers, the wonderfully-named Chuck Blazer, blows the whistle on him, the FA and the English football press are on Warner's trail with the zest and enthusiasm of the Beaufort Hunt's foxhounds.

As he sits in retirement in his Glasgow home, John McBeth can at least say "Aye well, ah telt ye".

Well Done Wagga

SO Leinster have won the Heineken Cup - well done to the Dublin lads, and particularly well done "Big Wagga" aka Nathan Hines. At his advanced age and with Richie Gray growing in stature with every international, I would not be surprised were the big Australian to announce his retirement from international rugby as soon as Scotland exit the World Cup.

He has always been an iconic figure, whether playing in Scotland, France or Ireland and on the day when fly half Jonathan Sexton wrote his name all over the match, how typical of Wagge to gate-crash with that crucial try for Leinster.

THE lack of self-awareness within Murrayfield is amazing. Perhaps they have been taking spin-doctoring lessons from Alastair Campbell - a man whose contribution to Rugby Union as press officer for the 2005 Lions was, well shite, says it all really.

The SRU media department put-out a press release following Mark Bennett's decision to join the Clermont Auvergne Academy, which gave the impression he had somehow emerged from a laboratory deep within Murrayfield, dedicated to producing Scottish internationals.

The gist of the release was how Bennett had come through the SRU's Pathway programme and the Scottish Age Group system and what a succcess this had been. No mention of the hard work of guys such as Harry Reilly, Morton Houston and Steve Miller - not forgetting Mark's dad, at Cumnock. Ignore the contribution of Jock Craig, Kenny Murray and the team at Ayr, who backed this brilliant youngster's promise by playing him in the first team all season - no, it was all Murrayfield's doing. Aye Right.

Maybe, if Murrayfield would give the professional clubs a bit more leeway and make them totems for the Districts, if they would put a bit more into the top of the club game, we would not be losing outstanding young talent such as Mark to foreign climes. Certainly, if I was a promising young Scot, having seen what has happened to the likes of Alex Blair, I would think twice about turning professional in Scotland.

ONE player who has turned full-time this week is Ayr prop Gordon Reid, and I had to laugh at the strap line over the story in The Scotsman. This referred to Reid as "a late developer". He's 24 and he's a loose-head prop. At that age he's barely out of nappies; but, he's packed a lot of First Division experience into his short career and, with Chunk maybe thinking about quitting after the World Cup - Reidy is the right age to maybe kick-on to add a full cap to his Club XV ones. The fight for the number one jersey at Glasgow in the new season will be keen.

Magnificent Sevens

I AM in my seventh decade of involvement in rugby. I was hooked by Arthur Smith's try in the win over Wales which terminated our terrible run of defeats; Jimmy Greenwood playing on with a shattered shoulder against Ireland showed me the courage it takes to play internationally; I wanted to be Ken Scotland; I played against Gordon Brown, Al McHarg and Gordon Strachan at school; I witnessed "the greatest conversion since St Paul", roared Alan Lawson home with a lot less detachment than did his father-in-law; I have caroused with Gavin Hastings, John Jeffery and Co - marvelled at Jonah Lomu; shouted "Gerritrightupyouse" and Will Carling and assorted white-shirted farts; come to realise Brian Moore isn't Satan incarnate and met living legends such as Barry John, Gareth Edwards, Mike Gibson and Willie John McBride.

Now, as I contemplate retirement, I fear rugby is going to hell in a handcart - unless we address such fundamentals as a law book which has become unworkable, a strain of laissez faire refereeing which is threatening the game as a spectacle and a consciousness in the professional game which will, unless curbed, take us down the dark road which football has followed.

Rugby, the game, remains great, but crisis time is fast approaching and I fear we do not have the minds within the game to divert rugby away from potential disaster.

I thought it was only in Scotland that we had given the inmates the keys to the asylum - when I survey the self-serving time-servers in so many leading Murrayfield roles. Then I watch the mess the English are making of appointing a Performance Director and realise - we are not alone.

But, it is not all doom and gloom.

Take Rugby Sevens becoming an Olympic sport from 2016. This single action could well be the making of the game. However, the trick, which the IRB will require to pull-off, and here I must say I doubt if they have the savvy to do it, is to make Sevens a popular world-wide Olympic sport, without it overwhelming the true 15-a-side game. Cricket is struggling to maintain the integrity of five-day Test cricket as the true game, in the face of Twenty20 and the mega-rich Indian League. Rugby could face the same dilmema in respect of Sevens.

But, now it is an Olympic sport, on top of its popularity in the Commonwealth Games, Sevens may well be rugby's future. After all, it shows-off the game's better points, the athleticism of the strike runners, the contest for possession at the break-down, the tackling, the aerial ballet at the touch lines, without some of the core ingredients so-beloved of the true believers, but which turn-off the non-believers.

That's why all the concerns about funding the Scotland Sevens squad have to be addressed - this is the game's future and we have to be involved. But, can the SRU come up with sensible, workable solutions? That's the question.

AS I wrote above, I've got a lot of time for Brian Moore - just as I had a lot of time for Jimmy Hill - which perhaps makes me unique in Scotland. 'Pit Bull' is one of the more-sensible sporting commentators around today and always worth reading.

His Monday take on Richard Cockerill, the Leicester coach, who is apparently England's answer to Neil Lennon, except without the red-hair and with added obnoxious qualities was a masterly analysis - would that some of my friends in the Scottish Football Writing fraternity could be as incisive and insightful (rather than inciting) on little Lennie.

Time To Cull The Rupert

FOR the benefit of those readers who never served Queen and Country - a "Rupert" is a public school-educated officer in a Scottish regiment. These chaps, quite often Anglo-Scots attracted amazing degrees of loyalty from their "Jocks", who would, so the "Ruperts" would tell ladies at cocktail parties in English shires, London salons and the shooting lodges of Perthshire: "follow me anywhere".

At the same time, in the public bars of Glasgow and in assorted farming and mining villages or in the textile towns of the Borders, the self-same Jocks were assuring their civvie pals: they had only followed the "Ruperts" out of some morbid fascination and to discover which particular heap of shite they would be required to fight their way out off.

As I survey the state of Scottish rugby in 2011, I sometimes ask myself - with the contraction of our army, have the "Ruperts" all signed-up for the SRU rather than the HLI, KOSB and so-forth?

There are some good guys at Murrayfield - just not many and not enough. I thought perhaps it was maybe simply the natural disdain of the journalist for the people we are dealing with, until I bought Ian McGeechan's autobiography 'Lion Man' and virtually read it in a single sitting.

'Geech' has been there, done that, got the t-shirt, the DVD, the medals, the knighthood. One wonders what this Yorkshire-born son of an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander from Govan might have made of the English rugby team.

Considering, on the back of a year or two in Corstorphine as a primary school boy, Clive Woodward won England a World Cup - what might McGeechan's mix of Govan gallusness and Yorkshire bloody-mindedness have done for the world's most-popular sporting villains?

What might McGeechan have made of a Scottish football team - a Leeds upbringing on top of Govan genes - that's one potent mix. He did a not-bad job on Scottish rugby and the McGeechan-Telfer coaching team would, I warrant, give even Clough and Taylor or Shankly and Paisley a run for their money.

Reading 'Lion Man' one thing struck me - he has the scars to remind him - but he is clearly no fan of the way Murrayfield has handled professional rugby.

McGeechan moved on in disgust. Telfer was happy to get out and into retirement. Andy Irvine has happily gone off to concentrate on the Lions. Peter Brown was rejected, ditto Findlay Calder. John Jeffery is largely side-lined, similarly Gavin Hastings. Jim Aitken and David Sole they don't let inside the door. David Leslie's health probably isn't up to the demands which would be asked. That's an impressive pile of side-lined knowledge and talent.

Ian McLauchlan, hopefully, has one year left in which to try to sort out a real mess - if wee Beastie cannot put things right - I shudder and fear for the future.

We simply MUST sort-out Murrayfield, quickly. Let's cull the Ruperts - NOW.