THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS
David Ferguson
THE year 2005 will be recorded in the history of Scottish rugby as the most tumultuous since the game turned professional ten years ago. It will be remembered as the year when professional rugby in Scotland took a long look into the abyss.

Who better then to take the reins than an inspiration who lit up Murrayfield as a player and brought excitement and to Scotland displays at a time when the joy of success was a rarity? Many of the 100-plus representatives from Scottish clubs, who congregated in Murrayfield's President's Suite in June, may have been forgiven for feeling that the presence of Andy Irvine as a candidate for a new style of presidency - one not handed down to long-serving committee men, but to 'ambassadors' - could act as a balm to sooth the ills of the game. Delusional, naive or just plain daft perhaps, but it would not be the first time that Scottish rugby had reached out to one man for inspiration.


As strange as it may now seem, the player voted Scotland's best-ever in countless polls, who once dared Scots to dream, with audacious, swashbuckling runs which mesmerised defences and, often, his team-mates, wants such notions knocked stone dead.

Asked where Scotland now stand in world rugby, he said: "We have to stop deluding ourselves that we are a leading force in world rugby merely having a dip in form. The statistics don't lie. You don't lose to Argentina, albeit gallantly, and get a narrow victory against Samoa and believe you are in the top six in the world.

"We were never in the top five in the world consistently. At tenth now we are definitely punching below our weight, but there has been a massive amount of damage to our game in recent years. We have adapted least well of all the major nations to professionalism.

"That's why one of our main objectives is to start climbing the world rankings, but I can tell you it's not going to happen in one year. Why? Because it takes time to nurture players and you must have a sound financial base to operate from. Gordon McKie [the SRU chief executive] has inherited a financial mess, and a debt of £22million to £23million can only be cleared at about £1million to £2million a year, so it's going to be a long, hard process.

"But the biggest thing I have discovered in the first six months is the huge lack of liaison and communication between the clubs and the SRU in the past, with many of the clubs' fears and concerns neglected by HQ. That is all about to change. I have great faith in the leadership of Gordon and the ability of his new executive team. Gordon is a very decisive and astute individual and will not shrink from making tough decisions, but, most importantly, he is a great communicator and he will listen to and work with the clubs."

Irvine recalls playing for Heriot's against Hawick in front of several thousand spectators at Goldenacre, where he shared the field with seven or eight internationals, but sharply cuts such reminiscing when he says: "That won't ever return - fact.

"It's disappointing, of course, but that was a different era. We now have an artificial mid-tier which we didn't have 20 years ago, and we need that tier if we're to remain a part of modern rugby.

"I'm a club man, 100 per cent through and through, but I'm also a realist, and there is no way we could have run professional or even semi-professional rugby through the clubs. We are finding it difficult to compete with three teams so how could we possibly compete seriously against the top clubs in France, England, Ireland and Wales by distributing our money through eight or ten teams? It doesn't even bear talking about."

Some ambitious operators in the club game still bristle at this argument, but what Irvine, with the rest of the Scottish Rugby Council and Scottish Rugby Board, seems to have achieved in his first six months is a coming-together of the game's warring factions. Some of that is due to his desire to change the SRU's approach from what was perceived as a 'top-down' one, where much of the funds were channelled into the Scotland team in the hope that success there - as the generator of over 80 per cent of the SRU's revenue - would filter down.

"Obviously, we would love to see more success at international level," he says, "but I would rather we looked at it from the bottom-up. I want to see more kids in schools playing rugby, more mini and midi rugby, more clubs playing the game and more support back on the terracing in the club and pro game. None of that will happen overnight, and won't happen in 2006, I'm afraid, but we are setting in place the foundations to allow those objectives to be achieved in the coming years and, most importantly, there will be much more time, effort and resources spent on the talented 16 to 19-year-olds we identify. These are the youngsters that are going to be our future international stars."

He continued: "This year has been a massive watershed for Scottish rugby because of the huge change in the governance of the game. Bill Dunlop did a fantastic job in five short weeks with the governance working party and we now have a structure much more democratic and much more representative of all the stakeholders in Scottish rugby, and far more workable.

"We now have a council determined to support the executive and the board, but prepared to properly monitor and assess the performance of the board. The whole senior management has been replaced, with more changes to come, all designed to eradicate the culture of mistakes and lack of accountability that has dogged Scottish rugby.

"There has been far too much hidden at Murrayfield and we are striving to create new accountability and openness, and new channels of communication, which must be kept open.

"But if 2005 was about uncovering the problems, 2006 will hopefully be about starting to solve them. Ireland have adapted to professional rugby with four teams, attracting crowds of 6-7,000 and up to 15,000 on occasions, and I believe that we can do it here.

"With teams run well, we could double the average attendance at our pro games and probably improve by 25-30 per cent our success rate - there is nothing like success to bring crowds back. If Edinburgh won all their Celtic League games from now to the end of the season there would be 5-6,000 people coming in to watch them by the end of the season - there's no doubt about that - and we'd want to move on from there in coming seasons.

"We have been through hard times and lost a lot of the camaraderie and spirit we had in Scottish rugby, but we have gone through a process where everyone now has a clearer idea of the problems we face. 2006 will be a massive year of adjustment, careful progress and, hopefully, consolidation, but also a new dawning, I think.

"We need improvement from Edinburgh, the Borders and Glasgow, which we've seen signs of, and we're behind Frank Hadden's efforts to infuse the Scotland team with more confidence. But, the most important thing in 2006 is that we get the groundwork in place for a recovery in Scottish rugby fortunes two or three years down the line. To do that we have to throw away the rose-tinted glasses and be more realistic about where we are. Is it more important for Scotland to beat France on 5 February or to see double the number of spectators at club games next season for example? It's a tough question, but without more interest and enthusiasm in the game from the bottom up - which means more schools rugby, more parental involvement and bringing more players through our system, rather than shipping in, and wasting hard-earned money on, overseas players at club and pro team level - we won't have a game in years to come."

In some ways, Irvine wants to be like the famous Rikki Fulton character, the Rev I. M. Jolly, who used to lead us into Hogmanay with messages of grim reality, but Andy Irvine is Andy Irvine: he is a positive character who cannot hide a desire for a rosier future. He clearly feels there has been too much fantasy in recent times, and wants to move the Scottish rugby community to make further change in 2006 and take what would amount to a significant step away from the abyss.

Irvine has helped provide hope and that pied piper role was why he was elected in June to help steer Scotland forward. In that, not much has changed since the 1970s and 1980s when he wore the No 15 on his back.

This article was posted on 28-Dec-2005, 09:05 by Hugh Barrow.