THE SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS
The SRU’s decision to rest players ahead of Wednesday’s friendly was wrong on every level, says Alasdair Reid



In the sacred art of Screwing Things Up, the Scottish Rugby Union are not exactly short of experience, yet the cringe-worthy denouement that they engineered in advance of the last round of matches in this season’s Celtic League still came as a bolt from the blue.
We were told, after all, that the errors of their Politburo past would not be repeated after the brave new dawn of last year’s administrative revamp, but the Murrayfield meddlers simply could not resist the temptation to interfere in selection matters that should never have been their concern.

So it was that Edinburgh, Scotland’s top professional side this season, prepared to face Leinster in their last match of a heartening campaign on Friday with the less than heartening knowledge that they would have to do without the services of almost all their established star players. Why? Because the union had taken the crass and muddle-minded decision that these players should be rested in advance of Wednesday’s friendly against the Barbarians.

Or rather, it should be said, those sons of Barbaria left behind after the invitational side’s most prominent players have all jetted off to South Africa for another bounce match, thereby honouring that great rugby tradition of swelling their pension plans in the guise of a World XV.

As a consequence, there has been an increasingly desperate tone to the SRU’s marketing of Wednesday’s match, but they were surely risking a referral to the Advertising Standards Authority when they sent out e-mails describing Scotland’s opponents as “star-studded”. No offence to Parma forward Brad Macleod-Henderson, but having never actually heard of the bloke prior to receiving the press release from the Barbarians announcing his inclusion in their squad, I would struggle to justify any adjective suggesting stellar connotations.

Yet even if we disregard the Barbarians’ continuing descent from their illustrious past into their present, gruesome self-parody, the SRU’s decision to rest Edinburgh’s top players, and a few of Glasgow’s too, was wrong on almost every level. It was an offence to sponsors and spectators. It was an act of monumental stupidity at a time when investors are being sought to support the pro teams. Most alarming of all, it came disturbingly close to distorting the outcome of the Celtic League itself.

At full strength, and with the incentive of wanting to give departing coach Todd Blackadder a fitting send-off, Edinburgh would have fancied their chances against a Leinster team they have often beaten in the past. As it was, their makeshift side of second-stringers did well to limit the margin of their defeat by Brian O’Driscoll’s men to just 31-8. At the Liberty Stadium in Swansea, meanwhile, Ulster found themselves in a classic dogfight against the Ospreys, only edging the 19-17 win that earned them the title when David Humphreys dropped a 40-metre goal just moments from the end.

As Humphreys’ kick rattled off both posts before dropping over the bar, the rugby gods were clearly on Ulster’s side, but their wrath would have descended on Scotland if the former Ireland fly-half had missed. Under that scenario, the title would have been taken by Leinster instead, and Ulster would have been justifiably aggrieved at Edinburgh’s effective conspiracy in denying them their glory.

Not that any official complaint would be made. For one thing, the Celtic League does not demand that participants field their strongest poss ible teams; for another, the Welsh and the Irish have been just as guilty as the Scots of treating the competition with disdain. Remember how most of Ireland’s top players sat out the Celtic League’s early rounds this season? Remember how Wales held two fingers up to the League by signing up for the privilege of taking on English reserve sides in an underpowered and eminently forgettable Powergen Cup?

Their actions have critically undermined the Celtic League’s prospects of developing into a competition that is the equal of England’s Guinness Premiership or France’s Top 14. It is blindingly obvious that the participant unions should be giving their fledgling tournament every assistance to take flight, but instead they clip its wings by treating it as nothing more than a development instrument, something to be slaughtered on the sacred altar of their international ambitions just whenever it suits them to do so. Those of us who travelled to the Heineken Cup final in Cardiff last weekend were given a thrilling and wonderfully inspiring glimpse of the kind of competition the Celtic League could become, which made it all the more depressing to return to a Scottish rugby environment in which drab expedience still reigns.

Of course, the clouds are greyest over those whose futures are in doubt as a consequence of the SRU’s urgent need to reduce their spiralling debt, a financial burden not entirely unconnected to the governing body’s lamentable, centrist stewardship of the game’s professional era. In which regard, the Border Reivers made a powerful case for being kept in existence by beating the Dragons 43-5 at Netherdale on Friday evening, clinching the second Heineken Cup spot ahead of the homeless and apparently destitute Glasgow Warriors, whose season ended with a miserable 33-7 loss away to Connacht.

28 May 2006

This article was posted on 28-May-2006, 07:43 by Hugh Barrow.