SUNDAY TIMES
Season’s swansong falls flat
Finals day failed to ignite despite the best efforts of the teams vying for silverware and attracted the smallest crowd in the competition’s history. By Neil Drysdale


GIVEN the mood of gloom which enveloped Scottish rugby in the aftermath of Friday’s chilling message from Gordon McKie, the SRU chief executive, it was hardly surprising there were mutterings around Murrayfield yesterday that the governing body could not have chosen a worse time to announce that the game was in dire straits. Finals day is traditionally an occasion for the rugby cognoscenti, rather than the prawn sandwich-munching corporate brigade, to clear their throats and transform the afternoon into an end-of-season party.
Yesterday there was a muted feel to much of the proceedings, despite the best attempts of Currie’s rustic devotees to introduce some spice into the atmosphere. En route from Waverley station there was no hint that a major event was taking place nearby, despite the participation of two east of Scotland clubs in the main tussle. “What’s on there today?” the taxi driver had asked me in Princes Street.



The build-up to the event was concerned less with hyping up the three finals than with reports that BT had decided it wasn’t good to talk any longer with the SRU, and that one of the pro teams is poised to be shelved in the next couple of months. That will be calamitous for the sport in Scotland, not least because if rugby is to extricate itself from the wilderness, it has to spread its appeal beyond its traditional heartland.

That argument was amply demonstrated in the Shield and Bowl finals, both of which featured representatives from the north and west of the country. In the Bowl, Morgan Academy FP defeated Highland fairly comfortably by 39-17, while West of Scotland edged out Ellon 20-14 in a pulsating encounter. The latter’s rise is indicative of what can happen when a hard-working committee and a committed local authority combine with their community to promote rugby.

Since gaining promotion from the North District League, the Aberdeenshire club have steadily advanced up the national structure, and are a stirring example of how the sport can and will flourish if innovation, hard work and enthusiasm combine to dust away the cobwebs of complacency.

“We are a genuine family organisation, who pull together through our dedicated team, our coaches and supporters. Although we have already achieved a significant amount since we came into being in 1977, we have the motivation and the drive to go further,” said Archie Park, the Ellon president whose evangelical fervour has been a breath of fresh air. “Anything is possible, as we have demonstrated over the years.”

They may have lost on their second Murrayfield outing, but with Scotland’s professional set-up in apparent disarray, and the SRU unable to stem the haemorrhaging of finance — except with swingeing cuts — the need for the Ellons, and Carthas and Highlands of this world to be offered greater encouragement has never been more pressing.

As for the Watsonians v Currie dénouement, it might be cruel to describe it as a non-event, but the match was effectively over within half an hour. By then we had learned the crowd amounted to just 4,726, the lowest attendance in the competition’s history. That pathetic figure sums up a shrinking fan base across Scotland, and also highlights the problem that Watsonians, for all their heritage and list of sponsors, have hardly any supporters under 60. As the team which finished second in this season’s Premiership, one might have envisaged they would be drawing in bigger numbers. Yet, at their dramatic semi-final against Cartha, the crowd was only 500 and the majority of those seemed to have travelled from Glasgow.

This article was posted on 30-Apr-2006, 06:56 by Hugh Barrow.