Hey, I Feel Good, LIke I Know I Should

WHENEVER a Scottish team, or an individual Scottish sportsman or woman pulls off an unexpected or heartening victory, I think of Allan Wells and in particular that wonderful STV documentary in the making of which they followed him through the dark nights of training pain in Edinburgh, all the way to his gold medal at the Moscow Olympic Games.

THE memorable snippet from that is, of course, of Margot's insistent: "Come-on All-un, come-on All-un", down the 100 metres of the track to that glorious dip for victory and THE gold medal of the Olympics. But, I also liked the sequence during the big man's lap of honour; he couldn't drape himself in the Union flag, far less the Saltire, he merely jogged round, arms aloft in triumph, repeating his mantra: "Keep the heid, keep the heid".

This morning, we MUST keep the heid. Our rugby team has just completed a three test South Pacific Tour, UNBEATEN. We did this in the most-dramatic of fashions, coming from behind to beat Samoa in "dead time" after 80 minutes. Replacement Rob Harley scored the winning try, and I hope his charming mother, who does so much behind the scenes at West of Scotland, is enjoying the moment. That try may well, given the wealth of talent we have in the back five of the scrum, be the highlight of Rob's career. I hope not, he has the talent to go on to bigger and better things.

So, we have won in a very difficult place; we have clambered a place or two up the world rankings, Wee Beastie McLauchlan can now retire from public office on a high and we can look forward to the new season.

However, we cannot rest on our laurels. We must, in the great horse-racing parlance: "train-on" from here. I want to see more consistency from our two professional sides in the Rabo Direct next season; I want to see BOTH teams in the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup; I want to see our administrators telling the English and French clubs to take a hike in their efforts to win more places in that competition.

I want to see us having a good Autumn Tests series, in front of bigger crowds. Losing to Tonga in Aberdeen would be unacceptable, that result has to be a given. We have beaten the Saffers before, no reason why we shouldn't do it again this year, and even allowing for their 60-0 hammering of Ireland, wouldn't it be nice if we finally beat New Zealand? Although we may have to settle for running them close this time around.

That scenario would set us up for a good Six Nations in 2013 and hopefully a bigger than of late Scottish presence in the Lions party at the end of the new season.

I see 2012-13 as a season of opportunity for Scottish Rugby. After that dire Six Nations campaign, we have learned to smile again, we sense we are going forward, let's do so. Yes, it's good to be a Scottish rugby fan this Saturday morning.

Forget the Tulips, Let's Plant Thistles

WHEN I was a boy and rugby was fun, there were set seasons. No club could play an organised 15-a-side game prior to 1 September in any season, and that season, as far as 15-a-side play was concerned, ended sharp on 30 April. Occasionally, the strict boundaries might be stretched by a week or so at ether end, for sevens tournaments, but it was domestically, an eight-month season, which allowed four months for cricket, tennis, golf or whatever. Certainly the Lions played in the summer months, but, that was to fit-in with the southern hemisphere's season.

Nowadays, rugby being professional, it is almost a 12-months-out-of-12 game. Indeed, those Glasgow and Edinburgh players not selected for the summer tour are already in training for season 2012-12, even as their club-mates prepare to take-on Fiji and Samoa in the final games of season 2011-12.

Do we now play too-much rugby? I feel we do. Even our top-flight club sides will be back in training within the fortnight, ready for their late August kick-off. I am a great believer in less-is-more. Cut-out the mundane, concentrate on the bigger games, go for quality of games over quantity, so why don't we get back to that September to April season? Just a thought like.

CONGRATULATIONS Tim Visser on his first cap. The Flying Dutchman has been a class act since joining Edinburgh, he has earned the right to wear the thistle and I wish him well. However, I hae ma doots about Sean Lineen trawling the world looking for potential future Scotland caps. I'd far rather the SRU was sorting-out the mess which is Scottish domestic rugby. I'd rather see a means in place whereby some kid from Possil, or Muirhouse, or the Raploch or any one of the many "sink" schemes in Scotland, attending a bog-standard comprehensive could be discovered and turned into a Scotland cap.

For too long we have relied on the same old schools as our domestic breeding grounds - nothing against the many fine Watsonians (the Hastings brothers), Herioters (Ken Scotland, Andy Irvine, the Milnes) or Academicals (Beattie Snr and Jnr, Arneil etc, Munro) be they Glasgow, Edinburgh or Kelvinside ones, who have worn the thistle, but until we see the first cap heading for an FP of a local authority comprehensive where there are few, if any, sporting outlets, we have failed to properly sell or organise rugby. We have a small enough talent pool that we can allow any youngster to slip through the net.

LAST week, Scotland beat Australia, who in turn beat Wales, while the All Blacks and Saffers did for Ireland and England. So, right now, we are top of the NH heap - scary, isn't it? I confidently predict disaster against Fiji and Samoa - it's the Scotland way.

Strewth - those Bloody Jocks Beat Us

JINGS crivvens, help ma Boab - we finally managed to win an international. Great timing too, Management and I are due off visiting family in friends in Australasia later this year, so it will be nice to be able to remind our Aussie friends that they lost to Scotland.

But, this is Scotland - I fear for us in the other two internationals, you know, the ones we ought to win, later in the tour. But, that's maybe a Scottish attitude, albeit one reared and supported by long experience of the two steps forward, one step back, progress of Scottish sports teams of almost any discipline.

We're not there yet, but, who knows - ach, let's enjoy the moment.

I CANNOT help but reflect, after the heroics in Argentina, now the win in Newcastle, maybe there is something to be said for a move to summer rugby. If nothing else, we could have a world-wide season of roughly-equal duration, were the Northern Hemisphere nations to switch to a season which equated with that in the Southern Hemisphere.

By putting rugby into the football close season, we just might be able to heighten the game's profile, while all those coaches and pundits who have advocated such a switch, and pointed out the beneicial effects this would have on our players' skills levels and handling ability might indeed, have been correct.

PLENTY of early movement among players in the club game, with Ayr gaining a right handful of new players from relegated Glasgow Hawks. The amount of movement remains to be fully accounted-for by the kick-off in late August, but, I am starting to see a club hierarchy develop in Scotland which (finally) has little to do with the old schools system which ruled for so long - and, that is no bad thing.