S6 May See Rugby Catch-Up With Then Overtake Football (In Player Development)

THE Scottish Football Union (as the SRU was back then) and the Scottish Football Association were both formed at the zenith of the British Empire. But, whereas events in England – the surreptitious recruitment of “The Scotch Professors”, which led to the recognition of professional footballers within two decades, saw football be quicker to accept the realities of money's less than benign influence on what was, up till then basically a recreational pastime; the more middle-class rugby code held out.

Certainly the “broken-time” argument which saw the formation of “The Northern Football League” - now the Rugby League, rocked England, in Scotland, the middle-class professional types from the Edinburgh and Glasgow Academies and the “merchant” schools in the capital and the other cities, were quite happy for the handling code to remain strictly amateur. And thus it stayed until those pesky colonials from the southern hemisphere dropped the professional bombshell into the ruck in 1995.

Dr John Smith - football internationalist and British Lion

But, for most of its first century, professional football was not a long-term career option. In the early days, the Scotland international team included “professional men” such as Dr John Smith – a Mauchline-born GP in Kirkcaldy (who was also an original British Lion), or the Reverend William Beveridge, a Church of Scotland minister. Why, legend has it, the great Alan Morton only turned professional with Rangers because his signing-on fee provided a much-needed capital boost to the family mining interests in which Morton, a chartered mining engineer, was a vital cog.

Sure, while the round-ball code was more-egalitarian: Alex James, Hughie Gallacher, Willie Shankly and Matt Busby were far from the first players to exchange the coal face for the football field, it wasn't until after the Second World War, that young Scots would leave school and immediately join football clubs. And it was not until the late 1960s that footballing apprenticeships became official – before then, the 15-year-olds joining big clubs were “ground staff boys,” poorly-paid skivvies by and large.

Jamie Ritchie - a pioneer

Today, nearly a quarter of a century after rugby union embraced professionalism, we are only now seeing the first wave of young players leaving school to go straight into careers as rugby players. I am prepared to be corrected on this, but, as I understand it, Jamie Ritchie was the first player to sign for a Scottish club directly from school – when he joined Edinburgh straight out of Madras College, as an 18-year-old, in 2014.

Of course, Ritchie was then 18, most apprentice footballers leave school at 16. Sadly, far-too-many of them are cast out into the cruel real world at 18 or 19. It is to be hoped rugby will take more seriously its duty of care to its young recruits.

I say this because, my reading of current events is that the SRU is preparing to mirror football even more closely. Already it is happening, and I can see this pattern developing, whereby the bottom line for the paid officials inside Murrayfield is just that – the bottom line on the financial statement – the profit or loss for the season, when, for so long, the bottom line has been the overall health of the game.

Right now, the SRU might be talking-up the healthy profit which Scottish Rugby PLC delivered last season, but, the reality is, the game is sick.

The proposal to start Super-6 has, as we all know, been highly-divisive. I now believe S6 just might be the future – but, as I have maintained from the start, if this initiative does go tits-up, I reckon it will be the fault of BT Murrayfield rather than the six clubs.

S6 has a key role to play in seeing rugby become like football, and become a genuine career prospect for school leavers. Although, it will be some years, if ever, before teenagers moving from school to a career in rugby start to make the kind of money their footballing contemporaries enjoy.

Actually, rugby might, in my view, be a better career prospect for youngsters, albeit the inherent dangers of such a contact sport. For a start, footballers tend to leave school at 16, with minimum qualifications, to join their clubs. Rugby players tend to move from schools to clubs at 18, after taking Standard Grades and Highers. Also, one of the backstops which has been put on the S6 franchises is the need for the franchise-winning clubs to have a tie-in with a higher education establishment, such as a university or college. This should ensure the young players are receiving an education in more than rugby, to enhance the value of those Standard Grades and Highers.

I daresay, there will be others, like Ritchie, who go straight from school to full-time rugby, but, for most potential professionals, the route map I can see is:

• club or school mini, then midi rugby
  
  
• shining in the SRU Youth Conferences, getting onto the performance pathway
  
  
• selection for the age group teams
  
  
• becoming a supported Academy player
  
  
• becoming a full-time Stage Three Academy player
  
  
• for the outstanding few – a full-time professional contract
  
  
• for the rest – a contract with an S6 club

If the SRU and the six franchise-winning get it right, while not all the young players in the system will make it to full-time contracts, those who don't make the cut to this level, will be well-equipped to enjoy a rugby career at a high level, and they ought to also have the equipment to secure a good job away from the game.

Professional Football has a justified bad reputation for hoovering-up young talent, and ruthlessly spitting-out, disillusioned and too-often unprepared for life in the “real world” those who don't make the grade.

It is to be hoped, the S6 clubs will take better care of the young men put into their care by the SRU's performance department than the top football clubs have.

Now, as I have outlined above. The BT Murrayfield professional administrators only have eyes for the bottom line. And, the bottom line is – professional rugby, at the moment, is largely unsustainable – it is not the cash generator which professional football is. This is one of the reasons for S6 – the SRU is expecting the six clubs to fund a level of rugby they wish to encourage, but cannot afford to run.

So, while S6 has a role to play in developing the next generation of full-time professionals and internationalists – they will not be able to sustain those players who fail to train-on, from promising youngster, to potential professional.

These guys will still need ordinary “amateur” clubs as a fall-back, if they wish to continue playing. It is getting this link between the ordinary players and the performance athletes right, which is going to be the difficult job.