Even With A Drink, Saturday Was A Sobering Watch

THERE ARE reality checks, and there are reality checks. Scottish Rugby was handed a huge one by the Springboks at Murrayfield yesterday, who exposed how huge the gap is between World Champions and Number Eight team in the world rankings.

And they handed out that lesson without one or two first-choice players, it was sobering. But, let's not be too-disappointed, we gave them food for thought a few times, we defended really well for long periods and we also have one or two big names to come back.

For rugby fans, Saturday was a special day, more-so if you had access to Amazon Prime. OK, they didn't have the Irish win over the All Blacks – now that was a fantastic effort from the men in green – but they had everything else.

One thing which did stand out to me, watching the games back to back, was:

Rugby at the elite level has to go down the road of 80 minutes ball-in-play time.

Given the cost of a match-day ticket, the fans are surely entitled to see 80 minutes of rugby – not 40 minutes of play and 40 of scrums and lines-out being set up and place kickers going through their carefully choreographed routines.

I think we also need to start differentiating between “technical penalties” - scrum offences etc, and “foul play” penalties. I have no quarrel with a kickable penalty for a high or “seat belt” tackle, but, given the scrum is supposedly the means of re-starting play after a breakdown, we really should take out the kickable penalty option.

THE OFFSIDE LINE did a very-interesting piece on Friday about the travails of Aberdeen Grammar School FP and the dire straits of rugby in general in the Granite City. It included the usual piece of forensic insight from the great Jack Nixon, a man who has been integral to Aberdeen rugby since the days of Ken Scotland and Ian McCrae.

I can recall the halcyon days of Scotland's oil at $100 per barrel, when it was confidently predicted that the Grampian Region would be the next growth point for the game in Scotland, and the fabled third full-time professional side would be established in the city. “Aye Right,” as they say in the Dear Green Place.

I fear for Grammar this season. You can never say never, but, it will take Life of Brian style optimism to visualise the Rubislaw side avoiding the drop this season. If that happens, I can visualise a long, dark winter for rugby in the North.

Of course, much depends on what happens going forward. As I see it, the normal rugby season covers two calendar years (2019-20, 2020-231 etc). But, the Super Rugby season now covers one calendar year.

Taking S6 first, they will resume pre-season training in February, for a 2022 playing season which will last from late March to October (with probably a break in July). This will be a six team campaign.

The normal club season, however will see season 2021-22 end in April, with 2022-23 running from September to April, 2023.

Super Rugby season 2023 will again probably run from March to October of that year, but, this could well be the first season of Super8, with (if the jungle tom-toms are playing the right tune) London Scottish and the Glasgow franchise being the new teams.

Super6 was due to be re-evaluated in the summer of 2024. With the expansion to S8, I can see that time period being expanded to say 2027. Meanwhile, the proposed Amateur Inter-District competition, agreed at the AGM back in August, is due to get underway in season 2024-25. Surely it will be given at least three seasons, perhaps as many as five, to prove itself.

If we look at this time scale, big decisions will need to be made by the AGM of 2027.

They don't have a lot of time, but, surely within the time scales outlined here, Aberdeen rugby in general can get its house in order.

I am often decried for saying this, but, I can see, post-2027, the SRU moving to S10 and that will be the only level of rugby played right across Scotland. It will be a semi-professional league, the amateur club game below that will be regionalised. So, if the Aberdeen clubs wish to see a level of performance rugby in their city – well, they need to get their act together.

I might be somewhat out with my geography, but, I reckon there are, at the moment, only 20 rugby clubs in the Aberdeen area playing in the national and regional leagues:

Aberdeen Grammar, currently in the Premiership and Gordonians, in National 2, are the only clubs in the National Leagues. Below them, Ellon and Aberdeen Wanderers are the only two local clubs in the top Caledonian Regional League. The other 16 clubs are all in the Caledonian North Regional Leagues.

An amalgamation between the traditional Big Two – Gordonians and Grammar MIGHT produce, in the short term, a team capable of surviving in either of the top two leagues, but – enough talent for a Super franchise? Ah hae ma doots.

This means, any Super franchise in Aberdeen would have to rely on bringing-in outsiders – it might work, but, again, it's a long shot.

The TOL article mentions how Grammar are re-building, literally from the ground up, which may well turn out to be the best long-term bet for Aberdeen rugby. Sadly it might also mean – no Super rugby franchise and ambitious players from the area would still have to leave to advance themselves as professional players.

I have another suggestion. If the clubs in the North feel they are being badly-served by the SRU, then why don't they do what a considerable number of clubs in the North West of England did a few years ago, come out of the official SRU leagues set-up and run their own competition, tweaked to suit local needs?