You Can Push a PIss-Take Too Far TCD

I CANNOT really blame The Junta at Murrayfield. After all, the way the Scottish Government has been going on, failing to cover-up the Alex Salmond stitch-up was really starting to compromise The Junta's hard-won place as the biggest bunch of tossers in the world of corporate governance – that really demanded a pointless gesture to re-establish the SRU's rightful place at the top of the incompetence management heap.

So, as if to prove the old adage: “Madness is repeatedly making the same mistakes, in the hope of a different outcome,” what do TCD and The Tossers come up with – well: they play musical chairs with a couple of positions, then sign another third-rate South African.

Maybe they think, with almost no rugby being played and the mainstream Scottish media treating rugby like a true minority sport – they might get away with it.

WRONG we have noticed, and, the troops are not happy.

I must admit, whoever is in-charge of Elite Player Development at Murrayfield at the moment, appears to be playing a protracted game of Find the Lady (only it's find the man) with the registrations of several Scottish players – as players are shuttled either straight along the M8 between Murrayfield and Scotstoun – or they make the same trip via a short detour elsewhere.

When it comes to player placement, the order of preference appears to be:

1. Is he a South African?

2. Is he a New Zealander or Australian?

3. Is he a Pacific Islander?

4. Is he Scotland-qualified

5. Is he Scottish, who has come through a Scottish club?

Nobody appears to be asking: “What the fuck is going on here?” Nobody is pointing-out to The Junta, they are supposed to be promoting and growing the game in Scotland. How does favouring foreign talent ahead of native promise promote and grow the game? Do they think our heads button-up the back, the way they treat Scots as second-class players in Scotland?

However, individual members of The Junta, did not always think this way, as a copy of a cutting from The Herald, which I was sent this week, demonstrates.

The following was taken from a piece, co-written by Neil Drysdale and Kevin Ferrie, for The Herald, in November, 2003, reads:

 

“John Jeffrey, (pictured above), the Grand Slam-winning Scottish flanker, has launched a scathing indictment of the SRU's alleged mismanagement and demanded an independent review of the sport as soon as the World Cup squad returns from Australia.

Speaking at the centenary dinner of Cambuslang RFC on Saturday, Jeffrey castigated the governing body for allowing playing numbers to shrink from 12,000 to under 6000 in a decadeP: said that Ian McGeechan's appointment upstairs at Murrayfield as director of rugby "smacked of nepotism" and "should never have been approved without the job being advertised"; then declared it was time the clubs "got their act together and sorted out the mess".

Last night, elaborating on his theme, the Borders farmer, known as the Great White Shark in his playing days, was even more trenchant in his assessment of the scene, admitting that he had been wrong to call for the creation of districts, at the expense of clubs.

"It hasn't worked and these last couple of weeks have been the lowest point I can remember, with the national team performing dismally against France, the three districts all losing [as they did again this weekend], and then Scotland scraping home by the skin of their teeth against Fiji.

"In straightforward terms, the national side is poor, the districts are a flop, the club circuit is a joke, and the SRU committee needs to be modernised, away from the system where the president gets elected by Buggins' turn. We are trying to solve the problem from the top downward rather than the bottom up, and nowadays the supporters never meet the players who are cocooned away from everybody.

"It also helps nobody bringing in all these foreign sporrans, kilted Kiwis and Australians, and my belief is that the clubs, who are the SRU, have to get together and halt the slide through their own efforts.”

Jeffrey, 40-times-capped, was honest enough to concede the district experiment had failed.

"If our leading players have to go to England to get professional contracts, so be it, because it didn't do our football team any harm in the 1980s," said Jeffrey. "The clubs have been left high and dry, but what they shouldn't forget is they have the power to change things. They could start by demanding an explanation as to why Ian McGeechan's appointment was rubber-stamped, despite the fact his star is on the wane. Why wasn't the post advertised, as it would have been in any other branch of business?

"I have the greatest respect for Ian and Jim Telfer and what they have achieved in the past, but good coaches don't necessarily make good administrators and we are reaping that harvest of that philosophy at the moment."

I wonder if, 17 and a bit years on, the same Mr Jeffrey, now the Chairman of the SRU, still has his doubts about how some top Murrayfield positions are filled by “rubber-stamped appointment of Murrayfield insiders.” Does he still wonder how some jobs are not being advertised and won via interviewing a short list of candidates? Does he also feel: "It also helps nobody bringing in all these foreign sporrans, kilted Kiwis and Australians, and my belief is that the clubs, who are the SRU, have to get together and halt the slide through their own efforts.?”

I don't have a problem with members of the Caledonian Diaspora, such as Cameron Redpath, the French-born, English-educated son of the Galashiels-born, former Scotland captain Bryan Redpath, deciding to play for Scotland. I don't have a problem with the other Anglo-Scots, such as Ali Price, Hamish Watson and Chris Harris in the current international squad.

But, when we see young Scottish players being forced to stand behind South African imports with no Scottish lineage, sorry, enough is enough. This is not acceptable and, to me, and a lot of other people in Scottish Rugby. It is not a position the SRU can defend.

It is an absolute disgrace, and it is time it was stopped.