We Need To Unearth The Successors To Toddy And His Ilk

Dr Iain Todd (1924-2017)

SCOTTISH Rugby lost Dr Iain Todd last week. “Toddy” was in his 93^rd year – a good innings by anyone's measure, and was the last SRU president of the amateur era, when appointed to the then top job in 1995.

Back then getting to be SRU president was often disparagingly described as”Buggins Turn” - when you got your foot onto the bottom rung of the administrators' ladder, provided you didn't try to kiss the Princess Royal at a post-match banquet, you could practically pin-point the year you would become “Da Man” - and it was always Man. There will be a degree of burlin in some long-undisturbed graves when Mrs Bradbury takes on the presidency, I reckon.

Iain served his time, beginning with the Glasgow District committee – where he was “consigliore” to Iain MacGregor's “Godfather” in a Hillhead HSFP “Mafia”, along with Minto Butters and later Alan Hosie, which ran Glasgow rugby.

From there, it was onto the SRU committee and, eventually, a year in the top job before he could relax. But, even in his tenth decade, we would see Iain at Glasgow Warriors' games, still supporting the game he loved and to which he gave a life-time of service.

There still are volunteers who do a lot for the game – the majority of members of both the SRU's board and council fall into that category, although it would I feel, be fair to say, Mark Dodson and Dominic McKay are more-accurately “businessmen”, whereas the likes of the late Bill Hogg, who did much the same job as Mark Dodson now does, was more “a rugby man”.

I was discussing current affairs within Scottish rugby with a veteran player turned club High Heid Yin this week and he made the point, with the millions of pounds involved in the professional game today, business acumen is probably more-important than a cupboard load of caps when it comes to appointing rugby administrators. But, he went on to add – with the new Super Six proposals, this level of knowledge will need to filter down a level or two.

That's true – I can think of one or two clubs with grand ambitions which foundered because they didn't have the guys capable of organising the funding of these ambitions.

Rugby will always need its volunteers, but, increasingly, it will have to be the right guys, in the right jobs, even if these jobs are unpaid.

The proposals revealed at last Saturday's agm indicate Murrayfield thinking – which I would paraphrase as: the professional arm of the game will earn the bulk of the money, and will by and large decide how the amateur arm spends it.

This – to my jaundiced eye – means Messrs Dodson, McKay and the staff at Murrayfield, Myreside, Scotstoun and the Academies will look after the professionals, leaving the amateurs to fend for themselves.

The clubs bit back at the agm, knocking-back a couple of motions; the emphasis on the club game being strictly amateur – the clamp-down on the level of expenses some clubs have been paying, is an example of this stirring in the grass-roots.

Preserving the level of amateur purity the SRU appears to be seeking at the level below the Super Six will be difficult, and it will need the right officials to come through as District representatives to the Council and so on.

That is why I maintain, the clubs need to set-up a rugby equivalent of the Scottish Junior Football Association – to ensure their concerns are addressed and to make the new twin-track system work.

This Scottish Junior Rugby Union will need to be driven forward by the right officials – guys who will have to, in some instances, put the game as a whole before the narrow interests of their own clubs.

The guys who made this sort of thing work in the amateur era – the likes of Iain Todd, are passing now, we don't have much experience to draw on, since, over recent years, the clubs have maybe sat back and let Murrayfield come up with all the answers – then moaned when they didn't like those answers.

The twin-track approach is both a challenge and an opportunity for the body of Scottish rugby's kirk – have we the men and women to grasp it and successfully run with it?

It seems to me as if the SRU want the Super Six franchises to be the equivalent of the old District XVs – sides which aspirational players can potentially play for. The most-successful franchise will be the one whose officials persuade the ordinary feeder clubs to buy into the concept of – we are a destination for your top players' ambitions; if they do well for us, they have a chance of maybe making it to the professional game – if not, they will at least be playing at a good level.

They (the franchises) will have to build relationships with the feeder clubs, there will need to be give and take and an element of singing from the same hymn sheet.

The new set-up could revitalise the game, but, it will only be as good as everyone makes it – can we make it work?

We live in interesting times right enough.