SOTLAND ON SUNDAY REPORTS

SRU is holding out for a hero
IAIN MORRISON
LESS than 12 months ago Freddie MacLeod was assuring everyone that the three pro-teams were safe for three years, but this rash statement was proved a horribly hollow promise after Friday's unwanted but not entirely unexpected news.

"One could argue that action ought to have been taken long before now," said the SRU's chief executive Gordon McKie, proving himself a master of the understatement as he reacted to his own findings that outgoings will outstrip income by a whopping £3m next year.

At the meeting to announce the inevitable cutbacks, McKie was unable to say the word "financial" without following it very swiftly by the word "mismanagement". After posting a loss in nine of the last 11 years he has a point. The net result is an overdraft of £23m, interest payments of £1.5m per annum and the distinct possibility of 30-plus rugby players losing their livelihoods in the next few months. It may be worth noting that several men responsible for this shambles are still actively involved at Murrayfield, while others wait in the wings plotting a comeback.

The crisis has caused a very brisk focusing of the Murrayfield minds. Just months ago McKie was refusing to countenance any outside investment that meant the Union losing control of a team, but on Friday he was fluttering his eyelashes and donning the slap like a $5 hooker in Times Square.

"We will be looking for strategic partners with immediate effect," was what he actually said, because suddenly time is not on his side. Interestingly, a proposal from Aberdeen businessman Graham Burgess and his American millionaire business partner Roy Carver has been sitting in a Murrayfield "pending" tray since January 2005. The good news is the consortium Burgess heads up is still keen to do a deal.

"We are not so much waiting in the wings," claimed Burgess yesterday, "but ready to go because we are going to have to act very quickly if we have to put together another proposal by August.

"We have a nice little consortium together consisting of myself, Roy Carver and Kenny Logan, who is on board as commercial manager. Since this news has broken I have been approached by a lot of people to say that if we get something off the ground they would like to come on board, so we may well add to our group before long."

Burgess also confirmed that Carver is still keen to make the investment in Scottish rugby, despite the distractions of the team that he both plays for and finances back home in the US reaching the Division Two playoffs. The two men have kept in touch, especially recently after rumours of last week's meeting leaked out and it became clear that the status quo could not continue.

"I think Gordon McKie has brought a dose of reality to Scottish rugby," said Burgess. "He confirmed what a lot of people knew but were not prepared to say: that the SRU is a loss-making organisation. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step towards solving it."

JR Ewing was not noted for his charitable nature, and Burgess, the Aberdonian oilman, is likely to confirm a few prejudices about folk from the North East in some hard bargaining with the Union. While English clubs each receive a subsidy of about £2m per season from the RFU (even the cash-strapped Welsh Rugby Union gives each of its regional sides about £1.7m a year), any investor in a Scottish pro-team would not fare so well.

Last Friday McKie spelt out the costs of running a pro-team at about £2m net of income and insisted that he was looking for a seven-figure investment from any outside partners, effectively halving the cost to the Union. This would put the Union subsidy at about £1m, but at the moment the Scottish pro-teams have almost nothing by way of administration or management structures in place - these functions are handled centrally from Murrayfield - so these would have to be added and paid for.

Additionally, Burgess is unlikely to want to pay top dollar for a team of players and coaches that he has had absolutely no say in signing since contracts are already in place for next year. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the new efficiency McKie has brought to Murrayfield, because almost half the Borders squad were out of contract at the end of this season and, in the event that the third team is collapsed, McKie could have saved a heap of compensation had he known two months ago what he knows now.

"It should cost less since we would have little control on day one of the takeover," argues Burgess, "but obviously we will have more control as time goes on."

Burgess also confirmed that Stirling Albion's little stadium at Forthbank remained his choice of ground. It holds a mere 3,000 spectators, but has the space to accommodate larger crowds with temporary seating and, in any case, Burgess points to the proximity of Falkirk and McDiarmid Park if his team are beset by the happy problem of too many supporters.

"If it happens we would be investing in pro-team rugby for the long term, there is no point in coming along and then pulling out after a year or two," says Burgess. "I envisage that it would take three to five years before the business was humming along and making a profit, although obviously we would try and accelerate that process.

"I will have to pull together a management team of sorts and I have already taken some soundings. At the moment we just have Kenny [Logan] on board. We would like to proceed quickly because I feel these are exciting times for Scottish rugby. I see no reason why the game in Scotland cannot be as well attended as the game in England. England is a good example because the game started slowly down south but has really taken off and now rivals football crowds. If we can offer as much spectacle and excitement as they do then we should be successful and success will bring the sort of names that crowds want to watch. The potential is there."

Looked at in isolation, the prospects for a successful Scottish pro-team are not great, mainly because the professional game has never taken hold with fans. Yet from a global perspective Scotland remains just about the only major country in which the professional game has yet to experience rapid growth, something McKie alluded to on Friday.

"At the end of the day any investor will have his own reasons for doing it. He'll not see an immediate payback because we know that pro-team rugby is an act of faith, but ten years ago it was an act of faith in England and look where they are now."

With that, McKie confirmed his preference for the understatement. "At least he [any investor] would be getting on board at the bottom of the earnings cycle."

That, like the need to tackle the Union's worryingly large debt burden, is one of the few things everyone involved in Scottish rugby can agree with.

SO, WHO MAKES THE RUGBY DECISIONS?
IN A DISPLAY of ventriloquism unsurpassed since Rod Hull and Emu were strutting their stuff on Parkinson, the Scottish Rugby Union's chief executive Gordon McKie moves his mouth but Frank Hadden speaks.

McKie was surely repeating Hadden's thoughts when he explained the axing of the sevens squad: "Don't laugh, but Portugal consistently beat us."

Let's examine that statement a little more closely. Certainly this season the results have been disappointing but then again England have lost in recent years to both Spain and Kenya (laugh if it helps), while Scotland came equal fifth in last year's World Cup. Until very recently the sevens squad, consisting of assorted amateurs and unwanted pros, was actually ranked higher than their fifteen-a-side counterparts.

Hadden is acting high performance director and the sooner this de facto arrangement is formalised the better. Someone has to take responsibility for the rugby decisions being made so it might as well be the man who is making them.

Related topic

This article was originally posted on 30-Apr-2006, 11:00 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 30-Apr-2006, 11:01.