An Enjoyable Final - Even Lacey Had a Good Game

THIS morning, after being otherwise engaged last night, I watched my recording of the Montpellier v Harlequins Challenge Cup final, played last night in Lyon. It was a good, fiercely-contested match, with the French side deservedly winning. And, as an aside here, I thought, for once, John Lacey refereed the game well.

John Lacey - had a good game in Lyon

I say French, because the Montpellier bread and butter is, of course, the French Top 14. However, as is so-often the case in international professional sport today, they are an international side. We used to joke that Edinburgh's line-out calls were all made in Afrikaans, so-many South Africans did they have. Compared to the Jake White-coached Montpellier, however, Edinburgh are a mono-national side.

There is so much money washing around in the French game these days, the club owners are quite happy to recruit southern hemisphere players, to the obvious short-term detriment of the French national side. To a lesser extent, the top English clubs can also recruit world-wide. The Celtic clubs do not have the financial muscle to do this. They are further handicapped, because, since a professional rugby career is a short one, the top Irish, Scottish and Welsh players will always be tempted to secure their financial future by moving to England or France.

To some extent, the three Celtic unions can offset the desire to move abroad by putting in place higher standards of player welfare, but, that will not always work. They can also offer greater top-level exposure to those players who are not perhaps established internationalists, but, always, cash will be king, and they don't have as much as the French and English clubs.

The English RFU has a deal with their Premiership clubs, whereby 70% of a match-day squad has to be “England-qualified”, perhaps it is time the three Celtic unions used their three to one monopoly and brought in a rule for the Pro12, whereby each club has to have 70% of their squad Irish, Italian, Scottish or Welsh-qualified. That way, we would still have some southern hemisphere flair, but, the majority of the players were the same nationality as their club.

Vern Cotter, we need to help him have a wider pool of potential internationalists 

This would offer greater opportunities for young Scottish players, but, for this to really work and for us to have a deeper talent pool from which Vern Cotter and his successors could select the national team, the SRU MUST get at least a third, and hopefully a fourth professional team up and running. To further increase the depth of talent, they must also get the long-discussed but frustratingly still absent semi-professional Premiership going. I appreciate it, funding might be a problem, but, I am a great believer – where there is a will, there is a way.

We cannot match England and France in terms of finance, or numbers, but, we can match them in intelligence, in organisation and in making things work.

In football, received wisdom has it, we will never again see a purely Scottish team, all from within 40-miles of the ground, supreme in Europe, as the Lisbon Lions were in 1967. I have never subscribed to this belief. Similarly, some would tell us, we will never again see the emotion and joy of 1990 and that Grand Slam win at Murrayfield, of our 1999 Five Nations win.

No, I believe Scotland is better than this, we will rise again, but, only if we play smarter, work smarter and harder and are better-organised than we currently are. We must do this, or, we are finished. But, we have to help ourselves more than we currently do.

THANKS to the vagaries of the British climate, the 2015-16 rugby season has limped on into mid-May. Indeed, while we can accept, perhaps, the professional season being extended to the final Saturday of the month, for the Pro12 Final, it does seem a bit much to me, that the amateur season, at a fairly low level, could potentially also end that week. Some of the lower leagues still have promotion and relegation issues to settle, due in the main to inclement weather.

But, we are also, at present, slap-bang in the middle of our now somewhat lessened in interest, sevens season. This afternoon, we have the Glasgow City Sevens, at Cartha-Queen's Park, the latest leg in what is termed the Legacy Sevens series.

Now, I know, to most people, sevens is all about the Borders series when Hawick, Gala, Melrose and Jedforest hold their “sports”. I can recall, in my playing days there were also established sevens circuits in the other Districts, indeed, Glasgow had almost two totally different series, with the top West sides – Ayr, West of Scotland, Glasgow Accies, High School, Kilmarnock and the likes, playing at Greenock Wanderers Ayr, Kilmarnock, Glasgow University and Allan Glen's, while the junior sides had their own series at places such as Dumfries, Ardrossan, Wigtownshire and so-forth.

The Legacy Sevens is a sort of homage to these. Now Sevens is an Olympic sport, and given we invented the bloody game, it is long past time the SRU properly sorted-out a Sevens series. I believe the interest is still there for perhaps a Premier Division of tournaments incorporating the Borders sports, and a lesser programme elsewhere.

And, while they are at it, they really must sort out the club season. For some clubs, they are still playing, while others lang syne put 2015-16 to bed. Rugby has always been a players game, let's give the players something to play for. Sort the club programme out Murrayfield.