SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY REPORTS
IAIN MORRISON
AMONG the deluge of news that emerged from Murrayfield on Friday, there was one item that seems set to put the game's governing body on a collision course with a section of clubs at the June AGM. Glasgow Hawks have already prepared a motion that they hope to table at that meeting calling upon professional players not involved in their pro-team's matchday 22 to be made available to the club game.

This is anathema to everything that Frank Hadden is trying to achieve. His plan is to increase the number of academy players and remove the majority of them from club commitments to play in back-up matches. It is also contrary to what Gordon McKie stated last week. "The protocol of older players going back to play for Premier One or Premier Two clubs, that to my mind is unworkable and has been unworkable for some time," said the SRU boss.

The pro-team academies were one of the few institutions to actually benefit from the stinging round of budget cuts that Murrayfield has imposed. They will be better off to the tune of nearly a quarter of a million pounds. McKie confirmed that this money was part and parcel of Hadden's plan outlined in this paper a few weeks ago to increase the number of apprentices that will be taken out of the club game. The Union boss claimed that the current number of apprentices stood at about 18 and he expected that figure to grow to about 26 in the coming weeks as youngsters are signed up before adding that the Union's plan "aspires towards having 44 as an ideal figure".

McKie repeated his assertion that some of the younger apprentices would play much of their rugby for the Premier One and Two clubs but he also stated that the back-up squad would play eight to 12 matches each season against the best Premier One teams, the Club Scotland international team and, of course, each other. Once these matches are taken into consideration along with whatever junior international commitments are left, there will be little space for club rugby.

Not surprisingly, this almost complete separation of the professional and amateur games has angered a number of ambitious Premier One clubs who believed that they had an agreement with the Union that saw them placed firmly in the "elite" end of the game. After all, raising standards was the sole reason for moving to a ten-team Premier One.

Hawick stalwart Terence Froud was speaking on a personal level since the Mansfield Park committee has yet to digest and debate the latest news, but his views will surely be repeated in many clubhouses.

"If they take the next crop of players what will happen to Hawick? The supporters will stop coming and the sponsors will go elsewhere and the club game will die on its feet and where will the next batch of players come from? Frank Hadden will be gone in five years and his replacement will be left to pick up the pieces.

"I am just so angry about the whole thing. I am not prepared to take this lying down. If McKie thinks he can take the coach's side [taking apprentices out of the game] he'll end up going the same way as the last man."

The argument focuses attention on the whole raison d'etre of club rugby, a question that preys on the mind of another mainstay of the club game, Glasgow Hawks chairman Kenny Hamilton.

"This whole issue gets to the root of what the club game is for. We understood that we had an agreement going back to the AGM in 2005 that had Premier One clubs included in the elite part of the game. If something has changed since that time then the shareholders [ie: the clubs] have not agreed to it.

"The question remains: does rugby see itself as an integrated sport where the separate tiers are dependent and interdependent upon one another? Against that there may be an argument that developing the club game is a completely separate operation to developing the professional game. I don't subscribe to the view myself but some would take that to its logical conclusion and argue that the two games should be completely separate and that would include two separate systems of governance."

The possibility of a breakaway by the Premier One teams remains remote but Hamilton was not the only club man to mention it last week and there is no doubting the anger among those who feel that they have been misled.

Still, it may prove difficult to get their motion passed at the AGM. There is a danger that the majority of Scotland's clubs will see this as an argument between two elites, both of whom are vying for the best of Scotland's young players: on the one hand, Murrayfield's academies, and on the other a small number of senior and successful clubs at the top of the BT Premiership.

The last thing that Scottish rugby needs is another civil war but it is difficult to see how the issue can be resolved when both sides start from entrenched positions. Hadden has argued that the failure to act sooner has been the Union's biggest mistake; the clubs argue that they are making it right now.

This article was posted on 30-Apr-2006, 10:53 by Hugh Barrow.