The One About Fixtures And International Choices

ON FACEBOOK this week, there was a mischievous wee post from a paragon of the Scottish Rugby Union Writers, playing dumb about how the PRO14 is organised, in respect of the cross-conference games – such as Edinburgh v Glasgow.

The poster, trying in vain to kid-on, since he's a Leither he must be thick – which he isn't, he's actually a very-sharp cookie – was suggesting these games might confuse the casual fan. Ah hae ma doots about that, the cross-conference concept is easy to explain and understand.

Such games are a new concept in UK sport, but, have been a staple of North American sport for decades, understanding how it works is easy. Also, cross-conference games are not new to the UK. I can remember cross-conference games in ice hockey some 20-years ago.

The basis of such games is to pad-out a season. After all, what are the alternatives?

If the PRO14 was run like a football competition, the season would only be a 26-game one – each team playing the other 13 clubs home and away. That would work for me. Of course, the modern game seems to demand a cash-generating play-off tournament, involving at least the top four sides. To me, these are cynical money-making exercises, I'm old-school, if you're having leagues, the team which finishes top of the table at the end of the campaign has to be the Champions.

Also, a 26-game campaign is longer than the 22-match regular season currently in-use, offering each team two more home games of gate and sundry income.

This assumes the PRO14 remains a 14-team competition. There are rumours of expansion, with more South African teams coming in, to make it a PRO16 or PRO18. If that happens, then, further changes might be called for.

[That said, if I were to suddenly be appointed CEO of European Rugby, with the powers such a job properly deserved, I would instigate an MLB/MLS/NBA/NFL/NHL-style pan-European league, in which the top players played; leaving the various National Leagues below that to develop players.]

But, self-interest among clubs and Unions would make such a league all but impossible to organise. So, it looks as if we will be stuck with the current set-up, with some minor tinkering, for a few years to come.

Maybe, by the time the real, necessary changes come in, the public will all recognise how the current set-up works.

I DO NOT have a lot of time for The Guardian's Robert Kitson, but, he has produced an interesting wee piece this week, listing the large number of players picked by Eddie Jones, then discarded after one or two games, and cast into outer darkness.

Among the considerable number of names Kitson listed were those of: Ruaridh McConnochie, Fraser Dingwall, Gary Graham, Cameron Redpath, Zach Mercer and Ben Vellacott. Graham has already been capped by Scotland, Redpath surely will be during the forthcoming Guinness Six Nations, McConnachie and Mercer we have lost to England, but, Dingwall and Vellacott could still get to wear the thistle.

I appreciate, there are several people in Scottish Rugby circles who would rather we upped our game in developing young, Scottish-born and raised talent. Nothing wrong with that. However, the fact is, we have a smaller, shallower talent pool from which to pick uor national side, and while I am not a fan of non-Scots “project players,” I see nothing wrong with fishing in the deeper waters of the Caledonian Diaspora when it comes to finding players for Scotland.

One of the advantages Scotland has is, we may have fewer players from which to choose, but, that means – provided we pick the right guys - we have more chance of being able to nurture almost a “club” feeling in the national squad.

The problem with this is, there is the danger, and Scotland in the past has fallen into this trap, of having to keep capping players who maybe were not truly “international class,” but, because of lack of options went on to win more caps than they might have with other countries with a deeper talent pool.

Then there is media interference, and here, thanks to the way the mainstream media has side-lined rugby to be almost treated like a “minority sport,” this is not so-much of a problem for Scotland.

Craig Brown has admitted, when he was Scotland football team manager, he occasionally capped a player in the face of a concerted media campaign for that player's inclusion in a Scotland squad, simply to prove to the media – the guy wasn't Scotland-class to begin with. I don't see Gregor Townsend ever having to do that – but, I think Eddie Jones has done this in the past, and will do it again.

In the course of Kitson's Guardian piece, he came up with this little gem: “If Jones, as he keeps saying, does not rate the Premiership as preparation for Test rugby,”..... There you have it, the England Coach, does not rate the league which his national rugby press corps keeps insisting is: “The Best League in the World.” What can we make of this?

Of course The Gallagher Premiership is over-rated, every top English league, in whatever sport, is over-rated – it goes with being English. Of course, their media will never believe this, they will go on pushing their Tina Turner rubbish to a gullible public.

In football, England's record in the top two tournaments – the World Cup and the European Champioships is a stunning 3% - 1 win from 33 tournaments. In rugby, it's better, 11% - 1 win in 9 tournaments and in terms of Cricket World Cups, it's 8% - 1 win in 12 tournaments (and that win was definitely pauchled).

Thus, at the highest level, in the three world-wide sports largely originating in and being first organised in England – the home country's success rate is 5.5% - 3 wins from 54 attempts. That compares badly to the records of Australia, 20% – 7 wins from 35 tournaments; New Zealand, 9% - 3 wins from 34 tournaments; and South Africa, 12.5% - 3 wins from 24 tournaments. (I cannot count France, who don't play international cricket.)

So, England are not as-good as they like to think they are. But, then again, we Scots have been trying to tell them that for almost 150 years.

Back in the amateur era, playing careers at the top end tended to be shorter. When I first went to a live Murrayfield international, Scotland's record caps holder was the great (Lord) John M Bannerman. (He was also virtually Mr Scottish Rugby at the time).

Bannerman won 37 caps, between 1921 and 1929. Back then, there were perhaps five internationals per season and, with the need to earn a living, most players could only give maybe five seasons of the commitment necessary to play at the very top end of the game, before career and family considerations forced them to step down and only play club rugby.

Then there were some strange SRU edicts. Bannerman, for instance, declared that Anglo-Scots forwards could only be considered for Scotland if they played for London Scottish.

British Lion Ernie Michie, for instance, could not be picked for Scotland while an integral part of a very-good Leicester pack, but, when his work saw him move to the Borders, and join Langholm, he was back in the Scotland team – while playing in a weaker club team than he had been down south. Then, there were an awful lot of players in the immediate post-war period who were capped on the basis of a good performance in the Oxford v Cambridge Varsity Match, who vanished into the City of London after their first cap and a season in the London Scottish XV.

Today, with professionalism, careers last longer, there isn't the same turn-over of capped players, so, to stay at the top level, requires hard work – both to get there and to stay there.

In the amateur era, England, like Scotland, had a massive turn-over in players – again a Varsity Match Blue, a cap, a move to Harlequins, two or three years at the top, then off to be “something in the city” was a common career trajectory. Also, the ups and down of the County Championship and selectoral bias was in play.

For instance in the 1950s – the Calcutta Cup matches between 1950 and 1959, Scotland used 83 different players in that single annual fixture. Of these only four players: Hughie McLeod (6 matches), Grant Weatherstone, Hamish Kemp and Adam Robson (5 games each), played in half of the fixtures.

England used 79 players in the same ten fixtures, with only Jeff Butterfield (6 games) and Eric Evans (5 games).

In the early part of that decade, perhaps because selection was slewed by performances in the Inter-District Championship up here and the County Championship down south, you had players from some fairly small clubs winning caps.

Today, if a player is not playing regularly in either the Gallagher Premiership, the top 14 in France or the PRO14, he's not getting capped. Back in the amateur era, with some 20 counties involved in the County Championship, the selectors could spread their net wider. However, you had to be an outstanding talent to get picked from one of the lesser counties; so, in reality, it has always been a case of the England team coming from around a dozen teams. Thus, selectors' whims came into play.

Today, Jones might still be selecting his squad from a dozen clubs, but, they are all of a more-similar standard, so, he still has to make the hard choices, and, some guys might fail their audition and find, he has no way back.

That's the thing with selection, it is not an exact science and, at the end of the day, it comes down to one man's – the national team coach's – opinion; and we are then free to agree or disagree with that.

Not that it matters to us. He's being paid the big bucks to make the big decisions, and, if he gets these wrong, someone else will get their chance to pick their choices for the national side.

It really is a case of: “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."