Interesting What You Find In Archives

 WHILE digging through the Glasgow Herald Google News Archive of 1970, I chanced upon a brilliant piece of work by the esteemed Bill McMurtrie, (pictured below).

 

The preliminary work had just started, which led to the first official leagues in Rugby Union – which began in 1973, At the time Bill wrote the piece, in December, 1970, there was much debate as to which clubs would go into the proposed 16-team First Division, i.e., what were the top clubs in Scotland.

What Bill did was, he went over the past five years of final Unofficial Championship tables. He excluded Ayr, who had been accepted into the Championship in 1968, and Leith Academicals, accepted in 1969, to give him his final five-year league table, which reads:

Club	P	W	D	L	Wins %
Jordanhill College	82	68	3	11	84.7
Hawick	125	102	7	16	84.4
West of Scotland	112	86	5	21	79
Melrose	123	90	11	22	77.2
Edinburgh Wanderers	108	79	5	24	75.4
Heriot's FP	115	75	9	31	68.2
Gala	116	73	6	37	65.5
Edinburgh University	79	49	2	28	63.2
Glasgow High School FP	111	68	0	43	61.2
Langholm	101	59	5	37	60.8
Watsonians	105	60	4	41	59
Glasgow Academicals	114	61	1	52	53.9
Royal High School FP	119	60	5	54	52.5
Edinburgh Academical	102	49	9	44	52.4
Dunfermline	80	38	5	37	50.6
Boroughmuir	100	46	6	48	49
Hutcheson's GS FP	79	32	4	43	43
Kelso	121	47	7	67	41.7
Stewart's College FP	104	60	4	40	40.3
Aberdeen GS FP	79	28	2	49	36.7
Musselburgh	99	31	9	59	35.8
Trinity Academicals	71	22	4	45	33.8
Kelvinside Academicals	99	30	5	64	32.8
Selkirk	109	30	5	74	29.8
Glasgow University	90	24	4	62	28.8
Jedforest	126	32	1	93	25.7
Hillhead High School FP	98	24	2	72	25.5
Melville College FP	103	19	4	80	20.3
Allan Glen's FP	81	14	2	65	18.5
Greenock Wanderers	73	7	2	64	10.9

If we look at those top 30 clubs, 50-years ago, and what has become of them in the intervening half century we find:

• Four clubs – Boroughmuir, Heriot's, Melrose and Watsonians have been “promoted” to the new Super 6 competition.

• Three amalgamations: Jordanhill College and Hillhead HSFP, Glasgow HSFP and Kelvinside Academicals and Stewart's College and Melville College FPs have come about.

• There was another amalgamation – when GHK and Glasgow Accies agreed to feed players into Glasgow Hawks. Hawks remain a Premiership outfit today, but, GHK and Accies have now reverted to being separate, rival clubs.

• If we take today's Premiership as the equivalent of the Unofficial Championship of 1970, only ONE Top Ten club from back then is still in the top ten today: Hawick

• If we take National League 1 as being equivalent to positions 11-20 in the Unofficial Championship, we find: Gala have dropped there from being a top-ten club and Kelso have maintained their status as a top-20 club.

• Glasgow High School FP, a top-ten club in 1970, have dropped to being a top-20 club today, where, they now sit as GHK following their amalgamation with Kelvinside Academicals.

• Glasgow Academicals, a top-20 club back then, have maintained that status, as have Stewart's College FP. However, thanks to their amalgamation with Melville College FP, Melville have actually risen in status.

• Aberdeen Grammar,who only just squeezed into 20^th position back in 1970, have maintained that top-20 (in performance) status, today they are a Premiership club, as are Selkirk, Jed-forest and Musselburgh, who were placed in the 21-30 tier back in 1970.

• Edinburgh Wanderers and West of Scotland, top-10 clubs in 1970, are today in National League 3, as are Greenock Wanderers.

• The two University sides – Edinburgh and Glasgow, have opted out of the SRU leagues, to mainly concentrate their efforts in the UK-wide NACS Championships for university and college sides, while another five clubs have fallen from top-30 status to Regional League level, over the past 50 years.

So, the overall picture is, of the top 30 Scottish clubs back in 1970, 24 are still through amalgamation and some consistency ranked among our top 30 clubs today.

However, perhaps we should have another look at Bill McMurtrie's excellent table, and think again what it tells us. That was a five-year table, and the clubs did not play every other club on the list within that time scale.

Working from memory, I believe a club was admitted to the Unofficial Championship, when it had 18 fixtures with clubs already on the list. (Perhaps one of the elder statesmen who reads this blog – John Roxburgh or Brian Simmers maybe, could enlighten me on the number, but, from memory it was 18).

So, let's look at the established clubs – the ones with the greatest number of games played – since those were the Establishment of the time.

This list reads:

Club	Games	Games per season
Jed-forest	126	25.2
Hawick	125	25
Melrose	123	24.6
Kelso	121	24.25
Royal HSFP	119	23.8
Gala	116	23.2
Glasgow Accies	114	22.8
West of Scotland	112	22.4
Glasgow HSFP	111	22.2
Selkirk	109	21.8
Edinburgh Wands	108	21.6
Watsonians	105	21
Stewart's College FP	104	20.8
Melville College FP	103	20.6
Edinburgh Accies	102	20.4
Langholm	101	20.2
Boroughmuir	100	20

These 17 clubs, each having 20 fixtures per season. (Another three clubs – Kelvinside Academicals and Musselburgh, both on 99 games, and Hillhead High School FP on 98 games, could also have a reasonable claim to Establishment status.

The final league tables of season 2019-2020 reveal that the top two club leagues – the Premiership and National League 1, the modern day equivalent of the top 20 of 1970 (only now we have 22 clubs) is revealing.

Eleven of the 22 clubs in the 2020 tables were in the 1970 top-20, a 50% survival rate. However, if we look closer, we see that the top 20 clubs (in terms of established fixtures rather than performance) in 1970 were split: 8 Edinburgh clubs; 7 Borders clubs; 5 Glasgow clubs.

The performance-based split for 1970 is slightly different, the top-20 clubs being: 8 Edinburgh, 5 Borders, 5 Glasgow, 1 Midlands, 1 North

Today's performance-based split is: 6 Edinburgh clubs; 6 Borders clubs; 6 Glasgow clubs; 2 Midlands clubs; 2 North clubs.

This is clearly a fairer division of strength, but, that can probably be explained since, in the days of the Unofficial Championship, the clubs controlled their own fixture lists, and it made sense to prefer more-local fixtures

Does this stability in status demonstrate that the club game is in a healthy state, or, does the fact Ayr, Stirling County, Currie Chieftains, Biggar, Marr, Highland, Cartha-Queen's Park and Dundee HSFP, have broken through in the past 50 years, indicate a healthy and competitive structure, largely brought about by the SRU running the leagues as the meritocracy it was never in the old days?

I feel, the SRU really has to conduct an in-depth consultation with the clubs and decide, once and for all, if we allow clubs to rise and fall according to their player resources and how well-run they are, or, do we say, as I feel we should: “We have a small, well-run performance rugby game, and a broader community game. The performance game fits-in with our 'fewer but stronger' ideal, and we organise this accordingly, with strict criteria for clubs which have to be met. The community game, we support as the starting point in the game, but here, enjoyment and local rivalries rather than winning is the aim.”

We really have to do something and right now, with no actual rugby being played below full-time level, is the perfect time to decide where we are gong, and how we mean to get there.

Once again, apologies for the formatting errors - I simply cannot get a handle on inserting tables with this new edition of Blogger.