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.