THE HERALD REPOSTS
McKie to tell Welsh there will be no Celtic League climbdown

KEVIN FERRIE March 03 2006

Scottish and Irish officials are preparing to lay down the law to their Welsh counterparts in a bid to realise the Celtic League's true potential.
The three-nation competition has struggled to establish its identity since being conceived five years ago, the latest obstacle is the decision by the Welsh regions to enter an Anglo-Welsh cup tournament.
Welsh teams were briefly thrown out of the Celtic League last summer after details of their secret negotiations with the English were leaked but Gordon McKie, the business trouble-shooter who was appointed the SRU's chief executive last year, will join his Irish counterpart, Philip Browne, in delivering a message next week that there can be no repeat.
"We will be telling them that we have to have a structured season that accommodates the needs of our supporters, sponsors and broadcasters," said McKie.
"That means Friday night rugby throughout the season and no repeat of this year, where some teams have gone eight weeks without a home game. And we are certainly not going to play second fiddle to the Powergen [Anglo-Welsh] Cup. It is also vital that this is sorted out very quickly. What has been missing is harmony.
"This could be a very powerful competition if we linked arms publicly, but we can't hang about waiting until the summer, as happened last year, so it will be a much firmer message that will be delivered."
McKie's reputation for openness and blunt speaking has grown during his eight months at Murrayfield, but his capacity for getting results will be demonstrated by the outcome of a string of negotiations that could define the future of the Scottish scene.
Sorting out the Celtic League is central to his aims, but so is the domestic game.
On Sunday, McKie will be part of a Special General Meeting at Murrayfield, which should finalise the new governance structure and will see off the old district system in the process.
In midweek, he was part of a high-powered SRU delegation which met with the Premier One Forum (POF) to discuss how best to maximise the quality of their competition while also improving ways of developing young players.
That included telling POF that they may have to look at changing their plans for next season because of an overhaul of age-grade rugby which could see the national under-21 team scrapped.
"It might not happen until after next year's World Cup, but there is a possibility of that happening ahead of next season – before they finalised their plans – and I had concerns about the void that could be created after December for the Premier One clubs," said McKie.
"Just as the Celtic League is the lifeblood of the professional game so Premier One is the lifeblood of the club game. We don't want to dictate to the clubs. It is up to them how they run the leagues, but we felt it was very important to warn them of this possibility as early as possible."
In the past there would have been howls of criticism from clubs about goal-posts being moved mid-season, the way in which the message was delivered instead drew praise after POF formed a working party to look at how best to manage relationships between clubs and the professional teams' academies.
"Last night's discussion was about being open about concerns," said Kenny Hamilton, POF's secretary. "We haven't got a conclusion but it was a very different approach to what happened previously when the SRU simply told us what they were doing and too bad if we didn't like it."
Describing his role as being "to unblock blockages" McKie said he is seeking to put together a clearer way of getting the various levels of the game to work with one another.
"We have to get more players playing high-performance rugby and to get that level you can't do it on two sessions a week, you need to be full-time," McKie observed. "We already have academies but they are not totally functional. What we already have needs to work better and needs to be expanded.
"There will be a prioritisation on what we need to spend money on and while it is not necessarily a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, there are other areas of lesser importance. I will find the money."
He did, however, dismiss reports issued yesterday which claimed the SRU is set to pick up a seven-figure sum from the Scottish Executive, which could help fund development plans. "That is utter rubbish," he said. "We have never even had any discussions with the Scottish Executive to discuss funding."

This article was posted on 3-Mar-2006, 09:00 by Hugh Barrow.