THE SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS


SRU chief executive Gordon McKie said last week that, unless serious outside investment is identified, one of the pro teams may have to be closed down. But every chief executive in the modern era has asked for the same thing and there is little reason to believe that a profligate millionaire will step in now, warns Alasdair Reid



If the tormentors of Sisyphus had wanted to give their man a more frustratingly onerous gig than rolling rocks uphill until the end of time, they could have condemned the Corinthian miscreant to the far crueller fate of chronicling the finances of the Scottish Rugby Union. Granted, the task lacks that element of physical challenge usually required in Greek mythology, but it is surely a more maddeningly pointless exercise than simply watching a few boulders crash back to the valley floor.
Hence the world-weary expressions of those of us in the press pack struggling to contain our feelings of deja vu when SRU chief executive Gordon McKie delivered his hard-hitting assessment of the union’s parlous financial position at Murrayfield on Friday. Were we a less self-effacing group of individuals, we might have commissioned medals for ourselves by now – not for gallantry or valour, but simply in recognition of the levels of fortitude we have been required to summon at each of these sessions.

Appointed only last August, McKie is too new to his role to be held responsible for the tone of Friday’s gathering, and nor have he or some of his senior advisers had the sort of lengthy association with the SRU to appreciate the Groundhog Day references that abound when senior officials regale the media with tales of fiscal shenanigans, corporate cock-ups and blundering financial mismanagement. Yet it is in this light that he must try to understand the degree of audience cynicism.

No one is quite sure when a rugby official first mused about the potential benefits of a bit of private investment in the game: my own guess is it occurred in the few seconds that elapsed between William Webb Ellis first picking up the ball and reaching the far end of the pitch. In the modern, Scottish context, the SRU’s reaction to the arrival of professionalism in 1995 was to wheel out a succession of thyroidal old duffers to splutter on about attracting third-party backers (the sort of chaps who wouldn’t want to, well, interfere) but the concept acquired a degree of urgency when those committee men who had just voted themselves onto the Murrayfield payroll did the sums that told them the era of spend, spend, spend would have to end, end, end if their gravy train was to stop short of the buffers.

Cue the sequence of Murrayfield meltdowns and the sense of continuing revolution around Roseburn that would have Trotsky birling with glee. And always, always, the same old solution: that everything would be just fine with a bit of private finance through the door. The list is roughly chronological, if by no means complete, but off the top of my head I can recall the case for bringing private money into Scotland’s professional sides being put forward by such Murrayfield high-heidies as Fred McLeod, Duncan Paterson, Bill Watson, David Mackay, Phil Anderton and Gordon McKie. And just how much was actually brought in by this stellar array of business brains and financial wizards? Zip. Zero. Diddley-squat.

We should at least commend the perspicacity of Murrayfield’s current administration and the culture of straight-talking that last year led Union chairman Allan Munro to describe the terms on offer for investment in pro sides as being on a par with an invitation to “piss money up a wall.” Asked on Friday what he thought his prospects of attracting a backer were, even McKie struggled to suggest they were anything other than slim: “I can’t say I’m over-confident,” he said. “It’s a difficult sell.”

And all the more difficult still for the way the goods have been brought to market. Only a few weeks ago, McKie expressed confidence that the Union would be able to continue to fund all three pro teams for at least another year, but on Friday he admitted the SRU’s financial situation had turned out to be worse then even he had suspected and that the aim of breaking even could only be achieved by offloading at least £1m of the cost of running the professional sides. Were the offer to be made in a classified advertisement, it might merit the tag line: Genuine reason for sale – we’re really, really broke. Not what you would call a strong bargaining position.

It beggars belief, too, that a shortfall in the region of £2m to £3m, roughly 10 per cent of turnover, should have become apparent so late in the day, just a couple of weeks before the start of the SRU’s new financial year. McKie said that the labyrinthine complexity of the union’s accounting systems had made it difficult to pin down the numbers more precisely, an explanation that rings all-too-true for those of us familiar with other aspects of the way the organisation works, but with no obvious increase in revenue, and with no obvious reduction in expenditure, it seems rather, well, obvious that the SRU should make a loss that is roughly in line with those made in the last few years.

All of this, though, is now water under the bridge. Perhaps an investor will come forward, but after a decade of waiting we have no reason to feel confident. Of those who have expressed interest in taking a stake in a Scottish professional side in the past, too many could be dismissed as either blatant self-publicists or blatantly self-delusional, offering up schemes that would require the suspension of reason and the rules of arithmetic to be even remotely credible. The likeliest outcome is that one of the pro sides will have to fold.

That this information seemed to reach Scotland’s players after it had been released to the media was hardly a ringing endorsement of the SRU as a people-centred organisation, an oversight that too easily recalled an almost identical scenario in 1998 when the Union peremptorily cut two teams without bothering with the courtesy of telling those players who were about to be thrown on the scrap heap. Already, one leading agent has told the Sunday Herald of his fury at the way his players heard they might be looking for new jobs within a few weeks, going on to explain that placing players with English clubs had suddenly seemed a far more attractive scenario than it did a week ago.

With McKie also looking for around £1m of savings from the union’s central administrative budget, it was not exactly the smartest piece of business that the press release detailing the need for cutbacks was sent out by two separate SRU media officers on Friday morning. And even if we could ignore that stark example of duplication, anyone turning up at Netherdale for the Border Reivers’ match against Munster later the same day might have been tempted to wonder why the Reivers need an official car park that is about 10 times the size of the one at Celtic Park, and why every space was occupied.

The culture of freeloading is still endemic in some parts of the professional game, and if McKie is genuine in his desire for root-and-branch change then there is considerable scope for some radical pruning. Sadly, though, it is at the sharp end of the business that the cuts will be most serious, with one team being lopped off completely.

But which one? It is safe to assume that Edinburgh, performing decently in the Celtic League, with a host of international players and with the greatest commercial potential, won’t be touched. Yet the assumption that the Borders, for so long the Cinderellas in this pantomime, will feel the axe may not be valid, for in many regards there is a more persuasive case for retaining the Netherdale outfit than there is for keeping Glasgow.

The argument against, of course, is that the Border region does not have the size of market in population terms to make professional rugby viable. Whatever the area’s historic strength, the numbers simply don’t stack up. Yet for all the talk of indifference in the region, their home crowds have actually been better than Glasgow’s of late (an average of 1852 against Glasgow’s 1700 over the last five Celtic League games) while their infrastructure is vastly superior. The Borders’ facilities are all close to Netherdale, while Glasgow’s – playing here, training there, having offices somewhere else – are, quite literally, all over the place.

It will be a tough call for McKie and his executive board as they consider the respective merits of the two sides, a choice made tougher still by the likelihood that the Borders will finish higher than Glasgow in the Celtic League and thereby earn one of Scotland’s two Heineken Cup places. The chief executive has only talked a good game thus far; from now on it is his actions that will be judged.

30 April 2006

This article was originally posted on 30-Apr-2006, 06:48 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 30-Apr-2006, 07:26.