THE SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS

It’s seven months since Gordon McKie took over at the SRU. Faced with huge financial difficulties, a losing national side and underperforming pro teams, he insisted that it was not a complicated business. He still has the underperforming pro teams, but the national side are on a high after wins over France and England and he insists the debt can be addressed. Alasdair Reid meets the man in charge at Murrayfield



On his journey into work each morning, it would be no great surprise if Gordon McKie treated himself to a brief diversion past Tynecastle, if only as a reminder there are those in west Edinburgh whose sense of job security might be even more fragile than his. Yet whatever comfort he might take from not being on the Vladimir Romanov payroll, it can hardly be the most reassuring thought for the SRU’s current chief executive he is the fourth individual to hold that title in little more than two years.
Indeed, it was almost a surprise to turn up at McKie’s Murrayfield office on Friday afternoon and enter by way of a conventional door, and not through one of the revolving variety. The customary clutter of corporate life covered a large desk at one end of the room – the same desk, it had to be assumed, from which the family snaps and assorted knick-knacks of Bill Watson, Phil Anderton and Fred McLeod had been hastily cleared at various times in all-too-recent memory.

In fairness, McLeod occupied the office for only a few months last year, a temporary and well-respected hand on the Murrayfield tiller at a time when the administration of Scottish rugby was engulfed by civil war. When the smoke of that conflict cleared the EH12 battlefield, there was a hilarious irony in noting that most of it had actually been produced by SRU committee men shooting themselves in the feet, but a more significant development from McKie’s point of view was the sport’s old guard had been so comprehensively routed that he could take on his new duties without undue deference to the baggage of the past.

That he intended to be his own man was made immediately clear at one early media briefing when he recited a hair-raising litany of SRU malpractice, SRU incompetence and good old-fashioned SRU cock-ups he had uncovered in his first few weeks in the job. Yet cataloguing the organisation’s failings was the easy bit – believe me, I’ve been doing it for years – an indulgence for his honeymoon period in the job. The far more significant part was what McKie would do to put them right.

And so, almost eight months on from its launch, we find ourselves asking how project McKie is coming along.

The consensus view of most Murrayfield observers is that he is still doing rather well, although it would probably be rash to credit the new chief executive for Scottish rugby’s recent contentment – the architects of which would more properly be identified as Frank Hadden and Jason White. And while McKie has continued to talk a good game, it would not be wide of the mark to point out that his sacking of Hugh Campbell as Glasgow coach last week was probably his most decisive action since his first few weeks in the job.

An indication, too, that everyone in Scottish rugby is now open to challenge, to justify their salaries with results. Glasgow’s had been execrable in recent months, and expressions of dressing room discontent tolled the bell as loudly for Campbell as they did for Matt Williams almost exactly a year ago. By removing the coach, McKie also sent out a powerful signal to the rest of his organisation that the days of the cautious approach are coming to an end.

Until now, McKie has been constrained by a budget, put in place before his arrival, that was, to be frank, a bit of a fag-packet job. Conceived in that period last year when the union was in administrative meltdown, it had the quality of those garbled last words scribbled by passengers on a doomed aircraft, its financial projections drawing heavily from the fiscal principles of la-la land. However, the SRU’s financial year ends on April 30, and from May 1 he will have a much firmer grip on the governing body’s purse strings.

So will he go gently, or is slash-and-burn more his way? “A bit of both,” he smiled, tucking into a mound of sandwiches high enough to suggest that the SRU’s catering department might be the last corner of Murrayfield to feel the chill wind of economic change. “The softly-softly part will be cost reduction through proper tendering procedures, which hitherto have not been there, and by challenging costs, actually asking if we need them or if they are relevant to our being a successful governing body.

“But I see those things being combined with potential capital transactions. We have a lot of land here and we are analysing what we might do with that. Selling the family china is not one of the things we want to do, but there are bits of land that could have a realisable value to make the debt more manageable.

“We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the debt was £5 million five years ago and it’s now £23m. It’s an interest burden of £11⁄2m a year. Carrying debt is perfectly healthy where you have asset cover and working capital that can service that debt. I’m not opposed to debt, just the magnitude of it.”

McKie knows that the back pitches at Murrayfield have had a mystifyingly cherished status within Scottish rugby over the years, so he was quick to point out that they are unlikely to be sold off. However, the loss of a large and underused tract of land in the north-west corner of the Murrayfield site could easily be accommodated, and there is talk, too, of possible developments in other parts of the ground to extract more value from an underused asset.

McKie gives the impression that changing the wider culture of the SRU is perhaps more important to him than the minutiae of its balance sheet or its profit-and-loss account. When he arrived, he was alarmed by the profligacy he found, and by the lack of accountability or control. The checks, balance and safeguards fundamental to basic book-keeping simply did not exist, while the task of getting to the root of the union’s financial problems was made all the more difficult by the labyrinthine complexity of the organisation’s procedures.

“I was surprised that the business had been allowed to get into the state it was in, but that is memory lane so there’s no point in dwelling on it,” he explained. “We’ve made a lot of progress in the period since, because this is not a particularly difficult business.

“We are putting in place proper control, proper procedures, proper communications and proper management to join up everything we do. Historically, a lot of decisions have been made in isolation from the bigger picture and we’ve made a lot of improvements in that area over the past six or nine months.”

McKie has also been obliged to adopt a more flexible position than was indicated by some of his more gung-ho remarks when he first came into the job. Specifically, he has had to back-pedal from his assertion that the SRU would not host their two allocated World Cup games next year if they could not control ticket prices. The final contract has yet to the signed, but he conceded that the games are “now virtually certain” to take place on Scottish soil.

“We couldn’t influence pricing,” he said, adding that both games will take place at Murrayfield, killing speculation that one might be moved to a smaller ground to avoid the embarrassment of a near-empty national stadium that was seen at the 1999 event. “It was too far down the road. Prices were set by the Rugby World Cup organising committee. When that happened we were not, for various reasons, in a position to influence things. What we need to do now is make sure these games are attractive to crowds.”

A similar imperative exists for Scotland’s three professional sides, whose form may have described a fluctuating graph but whose baseline axes have indicated flat indifference on the part of the Scottish public. McKie’s peremptory action in relation to Campbell was an unequivocal response to Glasgow’s miserable season, but the wider malaise has infected more buoyant teams too, for neither Edinburgh nor the Borders have made what amounts to a significant impact on popular affections in their areas.

The imminent confirmation of a three-year deal between the Celtic League and the Magners cider company should at least remove that tournament’s embarrassing stigma of being a sponsor-free zone, but McKie is also aware that the stop-start nature of the League (when the Borders met Connacht at Netherdale last weekend it was their first home match in more than two months) has denied it the momentum imperative to a top-flight rugby competition.

“Over the summer months we will be making efforts to get communities behind their teams,” he said. “The first thing we have to do is get the product right. It hasn’t been that for the last 12 months: not well put together, games taking place at different times, six weeks between games, etc. We need to build in greater predictability, with a pattern of home and away games that supporters understand.

“If we can get the certainty that Friday night is rugby night in Scotland then people will get into the habit of going to games. Last year, we were not as proactive as we should have been, although admittedly Scottish rugby was in a bit of a freefall then. Since then, myself and [SRU chairman] Allan Munro have been at the Celtic League table saying we want Friday nights and we want a better balance and structure to the season.

“The three unions involved are now agreed on getting this thing on a solid platform for the next three or four years. It has been a bit hit-and-miss in the past, but we all need pro-team rugby to make our international rugby work. The intent is there, but as far as having a product to be proud of then I’d agree it has been a bit tarnished in the past.”

And what of that brave new world, heralded by Anderton less than two years ago, in which private interests would take over the running of the professional teams? Gone, it seems, as McKie appeared to dismiss the public overtures of Graham Burgess, the Aberdeen businessman who had aired a proposal to take over the running of the Glasgow side, without actually volunteering for the inconvenience of fully funding the arrangement.

“That proposal would have resulted in our having a continuing financial obligation, but without having control,” McKie explained. “The key issues for us are that, yes, we are keen to get private sector investment into the pro teams, preferably as a partner or minority investor, but if we can find a way by which the contracts would still give us first call on the players then there may be a way round that.

“Ultimately, though, the deal has to make commercial sense. There’s a saying in life that you don’t sell at the bottom of the earnings curve and I would argue that the losses in the pro teams are at their peak as they’ve been so badly managed in the past. At this point in time we are receptive to potential investors, but the terms have to be right and they have to fulfil our objectives.”

But the pro sides have been told by McKie that the status quo of heavy and continuing losses is not an option either. “I don’t think they’ve had a chance to make a success of where they are,” he said. “I think they should have a chance to put things right. If they can have that chance then we will see how viable they really are.

“And if they still don’t get the crowds? Then, to be frank, it becomes pretty pointless continuing to have these pro teams in these locations. Next season we will draw up another budget, and at that point we will ask what crowds came to watch, what revenue was generated, what sponsors became involved, what season tickets were sold, what commercial activity went on. If it’s not working then, despite trying, then you might decide it’s time to do something else.”

This article was posted on 2-Apr-2006, 08:27 by Hugh Barrow.