Scotland - We Could Have Been Contenders

IN MY WEE East Ayrshire village, fitba is King. The wee boys all want to grow-up and wear the village team's colours, perhaps be in the team which wins us another Scottish Junior Cup.

Over the years the village and the club have produced several full Scotland caps, but, the guy who won the most – today he's a weel-kent club manager – and was awarded the SFA silver medal for winning more than 25 caps, well, his is a strange story.

As a schoolboy, he seldom got past the bench, no Scottish schools honours came his way. Indeed, the villager who ran the local secondary school team for many years, producing a number of Scotland caps and a good few senior players along the way later confessed: “I simply never got him – I didn't think he'd ever make it in the Juniors, far less play for Scotland, but, I was wrong.”

The school janitor, who had played in the old English First Division back in the day saw something, however. He encouraged the kid to keep trying and takes great pleasure in his success.

The man himself, you ask him,he will tell you: “There are far-better players than I was still living in the village.”

Another village boy Big Andy, former Scotland manager George Burley, who played in the same school team, said of him: “Andy is the most naturally-talented player I ever played with, he could do things with the ball nobody else could.”

But, the closest Andy got to the big time was playing in the Juniors with a good Auchinleck Talbot team, where he alternated long periods of hardly seeming interested with occasional, match-winning, spells of magic.

However, Andy realised he had missed the boat, but, some years down the line he had a chance to stop others making the same mistake. He goaded and encouraged our 25-caps-plus man, and another local boy – who had married a village girl, to work on their talent. The other guy went on to captain Scotland. They listened, learned, put the work in and got the pay-off.

Another wee story. During one of his spells as manager of St Mirren, current Love Street Chief Executive Tony Fitzpatrick covered the dressing room area at Love Street with printed homilies:

• Fail to prepare – prepare to fail

• The harder I train – the luckier I get

• Success is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration

• There is no substitute for hard work

• Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy

I don't know how much attention his young Buddies paid to these, but, when Ajax came to play Rangers in a European game, and trained at Love Street, their coaching staff took plenty of pictures of the homilies, which may well have appeared on the walls back in Amsterdam.

Putting up inspirational messages may work, but, at the end of the day, if the players choose to ignore the inspiration, or not listen to the older guys telling them they can still make it, then put in the effort – well, 20 or 30 years down the line, they'll be sitting in the corner of the pub giving their own version of Marlon Brando's “Ah could have bin a contenda,” speech.

It also happens in rugby. We had a flanker at our wee club who was a potential world-beater, but for one small defect – he would not train. He was a stick-out every Saturday, but, we never saw him at training. He even got picked-up by the local Premiership club and went, via one game in the Seconds to the Firsts, but, here his aversion to training meant he was soon back with us. A functioning brain cell and a modicum of dedication – I'm certain he would have played for Scotland.

We had another guy, a big lock, who could never find favour with the coach and the guys picking the first team, so, he quit rugby during that brief flurry of American Football in Scotland.

He got picked for the Scotland American Football team, where he met a guy from the local Premiership rugby club, who was having a bit of fun dabbling in grid iron. When the Scottish grid iron bubble burst, this guy persuaded our former lock to give rugby another try – he ended up playing for Glasgow.

If you've come this far, over 700 words into this post, you may be wondering where the old fool is going. If so, you have reached the kernel of this story.

Professional rugby is going the way of professional football. The big clubs have guys watching the top schools sides in action, picking-out, in their late teens, the young players they think will make it. These guys go into academies and get picked for age group teams – they are contenders, for professional contracts.

There are approximately 80 schools and clubs in Scotland playing rugby within the SRU system, at U-18 level. At roughly 20 players per squad, that's a pool of 1600 potential adult players every year. I don't know the exact figure, it may well be a QI answer (nobody knows), but, anecdotal evidence suggests 50% drop out on leaving school or youth rugby – which cuts the pool to 800 players.

Of these, maybe 25 tops, will get an Academy contract – that's 3%. This leaves the other 97% - 775 players, who have a hard road to travel. First of all, they've got to get past the established players into their club's first XV. Once there, they have to play well enough, consistently enough, to attract the attention of one of the six S6 clubs.

If they can pick-up an S6 contract, they still have a chance of an eventual professional contract, however, their old team mate – who got the age group recognition and the Academy contract – he's already half-way down the home straight ahead of them.

Say only 3% get their chance in S6 – that's another 23 players each season, call it 24, 4 per club, you see how difficult it is. And they will not all make it. Some will be unable to give the necessary time, due to work or other commitments; some will be injured; others will simply not enjoy the mental grind of a semi-professional league but will happily drop down to ordinary club rugby and play with their mates.

Making it via our admittedly crooked young player pathway is hard. When the route of travel is via S6, or the traveller is a late developer, the road is even tougher. But, put the work in and success may follow.

You see Scotland's problem. We're a small nation, with a limited gene pool. In rugby, we have consistently punched above our weight, but, with newer countries coming in to challenge the Establishment – of which we are a part, we have to work harder, work smarter, and work together, if we are not to suffer the same fate as our football team and drop down the pecking order.

That's the challenge – now, how are we gong to meet it?

Or, 20 or 30 years down the line, is TCD's successor's successor's successor going to be sitting in the cheap seats at a World Rugby Congress moaning: “We're Scotland, we used to be contenders.”