Don't Shoot The Messenger

IN MY last post, I was fairly harsh on young Andrew McMenemy, after his poor performance as referee of the Ayr v Currie Premiership A match. Today I wish to congratulate Andrew on being chosen to referee the British & Irish Cup Final between Bristol and Bedford.

I hope he does well; he probably will, having got the bad game out of his system.

I was puzzled on Monday to receive an e-mail from Murrayfield, taking me to task about my comments re Andrew's refereeing. OK, it appears I and most of the crowd, missed a yellow card for a Currie player; but if the referee doesn't make it clear that he is yellow-carding someone, there is a chance it will be missed, when a string of substitutions are being made at the same time.

But, my point in raising this is, rather than the SRU petulantly having a go at a single journalist, whose views on one game they disagree with, shouldn't they be sorting-out their own referees. Scotland's whistlers are well down the international pecking order these days and given the standard of some of the Irish and Welsh guys we have to thole in Magners League games and internationals, if we cannot get guys onto the big games, we've got a problem.

Mind you, Peter Allen probably, single-handedly set back the cause of Scottish refereeing some five years in the Wales v Ireland game - making our problem that bit worse.

GOOD luck Michael Bradley - you're gonna need it, now you've landed the Edinburgh job. Bradley didn't exactly set the heather on fire with Connacht, so it's not as if his appointment has excited the natives in Edinburgh. Could anything excite the natives in the capital?

Interesting suggestion from Ian Morrison in Sunday's Scotland on Sunday, floating the idea of asking the Royal Highland if they might co-operate with the SRU in sticking a rugby pitch onto the main arena at Ingliston as an alternative home for Edinburgh. This plan has real merit and I hope someone takes it further.

JUST a thought on the proposal to make every division below National League One a regional one from next season - if this happens, shouldn't we think of re-introducing inter-district rugby as a means of allowing those players with regional league teams who might have the potential for higher things to show what they can do. Such a competition would I feel become even more significant come 2012/13, when the number of teams playing in truly-national rather than regional leagues decreases again. We have to create and keep open a pathway to the top. In fact, rather than going inter-district, I'd rather go inter-county.

The Counties Championship, which staggered along for a few years in the late eighties, early nineties, largely ignored by Murrayfield, was a terrific competition, killed-off by not quite publicly-admitted distaste from Murrayfield.