Edinburgh Evening News reports
BILL LOTHIAN
TWO senior players in Scotland's clubs' team to face Ireland on Friday have joined forces in calling for an early end to the latest league reconstruction debate currently engaging Scottish rugby.

Ex-pros Tam McVie of Heriot's and Boroughmuir's Dave Cunningham believe the game would be best served at grassroots by deciding once and for all whether there should be a concentration of resources into fewer than the present 12 clubs - or an expansion to allow more rising stars the chance to be talent-spotted with a view to gaining contacts. Speaking from the pinnacle of the club scene as a first-ever international for amateur players looms at Donnybrook, Dublin, on the eve of Scotland's latest RBS Six Nations venture, what was mainly clear, though, was the extent of the division in the ranks.

McVie, surely, spoke for many when he said: "What is the best size and shape for the Premiership has been a question knocking around for almost a decade and I nearly can't keep track.

"But while immune from the arguing - I've seen it all before - there are probably too many clubs in the top flight."

Yet as McVie hints at a more condensed competition to hot-house some outstanding young talent on the club scene - "while I was lucky enough to play club rugby at a time when internationalists were still plying their trade there, the standard of youngsters coming through is rising again," he says - across the city another opinion holds sway.

Credit Dave Cunningham, too, with laying his cards on the table straightaway at the end of a week which has seen a working party formed to debate the issue once more.

It's a move that could eventually render much of this season's machinations meaningless if the proposed three down, one up formula to create a 10-team competition in 2006-07 is eventually scrapped.

Says Cunningham: "As a member of the Boroughmuir team currently occupying one of the bottom three slots, people are bound to make accusations of self interest when I claim big is best for the BT Premiership.

"But I can honestly say that having thought the ideas through, there is more to be gained at club level by having 14 teams rather than 10 in the top flight.

"For a start, 14 teams will mean extra opportunities for players to be spotted with a view to earning contracts with the districts.

"How often, for example, do these district scouts cast their nets down to Division Two level?

"Also, there will be a far greater variety to the fixtures than playing just seven rivals each season plus cup ties.

"I also like the notion of an extended fixture list, and as someone who is used to going on summer tours with a team representing my police work, the longer the season runs the better.

"Besides, unless they play seven-a-sides there isn't much to hold the attention of players in the later stages of the season at the moment."

Certainly the idea of playing into the summer provokes a more animated response from McVie as he ponders the current scheme which, unless changed, will have the leagues over by Christmas next season - though, as yet, no alternative has been found.

"I'd be in favour of anything that takes rugby into the better weather months and out of mid-winter" says McVie, adding: "Better to play on a hard-ish pitch than something resembling a mud-bath.

"So, anything along the lines of a winter shutdown with play going on into the summer would suit me fine." Regardless of what the authorities eventually come up with, both McVie and Cunningham - each has represented Edinburgh in Europe - argue that standards can be raised also by expanding the type of clubs' international they are about to help pioneer.

McVie says: "Not everyone wants to be a pro rugby player.

"In my own case, I could possibly have pushed myself harder to remain with Edinburgh, but in the late 1990s an amalgamation with Borders to form the Reivers meant players being released, and I was pleased then to find a way of combining work with rugby.

"I've got the best of both worlds - playing rugby at weekends and developing a career - although recognition in the form of a place in Scotland's amateur squad makes all the effort put in at Heriot's even more worthwhile.

"I hope that this type of fixture grows so that other countries are encountered.

"That will be an incentive for the club lads to push the bar up even higher."

Cunningham adds: "I am getting as big a buzz out of being chosen for the Scottish clubs' side as I did from my age-group caps and also turning out for the early Edinburgh teams in Europe."

McVie, meanwhile, says: "The reality is that clubs have to be feeder for the pro teams, but by creating an amateur international side recognition can still be achievable for those who don't manage to go the whole way."

This article was posted on 6-Mar-2006, 12:36 by Hugh Barrow.