SUNDAY TIMES REPORTS
McKie hits out in World Cup row
SRU chief Gordon McKie says Scotland may waive right to host 2007 World Cup games if costs aren’t met. By Mark Palmer


GORDON McKIE has spent his first six months as chief executive of the Scottish Rugby Union sweeping up the mess left behind by his predecessors, and will this week attempt to rectify their potentially most damaging legacy.
McKie last week met with representatives from the organising committee of next year’s Rugby World Cup in an effort to at least reduce the huge loss of both money and face that could derive from Murrayfield hosting two pool games, Scotland’s ‘reward’ for backing the original French bid over England’s. An announcement is expected as early as this midweek.





He has refused to rule out giving the matches back to France, revealing that no formal agreement exists to stage them in Edinburgh.

His concern centres on the fact that the governing body have had no say in ticket pricing, with packages to watch Scotland play New Zealand and a lowly European qualifier averaging £118. The European qualifier, already unattractive enough, is to be played on a Tuesday, raising the prospect of many thousands of empty seats in the national stadium.

Furthermore, the SRU are expected to cover the “seven-figure sum” of both hosting the matches and having Murrayfield meet World Cup stadium criteria. “Unless we know we will be reimbursed, it would be folly of me to put a further hole in our balance sheet by hosting games here,” McKie said. “There has been no sense of risk management.”

The affair represents the first of many challenges facing McKie as he prepares for phase two of his stated three-stage plan to restore the credibility of Scottish rugby. The first step was simply to come to terms with the sheer magnitude of the incompetence he found at all levels of the governing body.

“So much has gone on that has been unmanaged, uncontrolled or not even in writing,” he says. “There have been no purchase orders, so people make demands for payment and we don’t know who, if anyone, has received the goods. It’s like the house that Jack built in here.

“The ethos of this place has been complacent, lazy and arrogant. The culture has been ‘we’re the governing body. The phone will ring and people will send us money’. There has been no structure, no method, no responsibility to any of it.”

McKie has already promised development across the playing board. At national level, he is considering giving Frank Hadden a budget to appoint full-time assistant coaches. At present, four pro team coaches are employed on an ‘as and when’ basis.

He has also vowed to make significant funds available to attract a top-level head coach to Edinburgh Gunners, as a replacement for the departing Todd Blackadder. Glasgow, meanwhile, should soon move closer to securing a long-term home, with discussions ongoing with Partick Thistle to extend the ground share of Firhill beyond the present six-month arrangement.

Further down his hitlist are the four “underperforming” SRU academies, to revitalise which he will soon appoint a head of player development. “Developing players has been pretty low down the pecking order. I’m looking to change all that,” added McKie. “Again, like everything else I’ve been trying to instil at the SRU, it’s about accountability.”

This article was posted on 19-Feb-2006, 20:51 by Hugh Barrow.