SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS

WARRIORS STAR OPTS FOR UNIVERSITY AS CUTBACKS BITE




Rising SRU debt forces back-row prodigy to rethink his professional career, reports Kris Gilmartin



Rising Glasgow Warriors star John Barclay, fast-tracked into the Scotland squad after school by Matt Williams, is turning away from rugby to focus on university.
It is a worrying effect of the uncertainty surrounding the professional game – especially at the end of a good season for Barclay, who made regular starts for his club.

As a young professional, the back-row prodigy has had to rethink his career plans with the possibility that one professional Scottish team may face extinction at the end of the season, albeit a last resort for the SRU, whose debt is estimated to spiral to a crippling £26 million by the end of this season.

Chief executive Gordon McKie has already made his intentions clear by slashing the Sevens, U-19s and U-21s programme. Barclay, who captained the under-19s last season, was unsure how the loss of these representative sides was going to affect Scottish Rugby,

He won’t quit the game entirely and will stay with Glasgow but his training programme will be radically adjusted as he begins a four-year course in biomedical sciences.

Barclay said: “I want to study. Obviously it would be pretty serious if one of the pro-teams was to be scrapped. Not just for us, but for every pro team, because if one team gets cut, then every single player goes into a player pool. It’s not just if Glasgow gets cut. We would be reassigned clubs, everyone would be put into a huge player pool, then the coaches would pick the players they wanted. Obviously that would be quite disastrous if we had squads of 45, especially for younger guys, it would mean not much game time, because there would simply be too many players.

“Gordon McKie has come in two or three times to speak to us, and he’s basic ally said that even if one team goes bust, if you are a player in contract, they will honour that contract. There’s nothing we can really do, so it’s a bit of a cliche, but you’ve just got to ignore it and play rugby and that’s what we get paid to do. He assures us he’s trying to do everything he can, to keep us pos itive, and hopefully there will still be three pro-teams next season. Axing a team is very much a last resort.”

Glasgow and Scotland centre Graeme Morrison, who has just recovered from a double-hernia operation, encountered difficulties as a part-time student and rugby professional,

“My training times were coinciding with lecture times, so in order for me to establish myself in the Glasgow team I would have to go to training, and then catch up with uni work from notes my friends had taken.

“After a while I found it pretty hard, so I went to my course adviser and asked her if anything could be put in place for me to be able to do both without falling behind. But they had nothing in place for circumstances like this.

“There are a few universities that do accommodate athletes in Scotland like Napier, but a big uni like Glasgow should really have more flexibility and thrive on their students’ sporting achievements, so I think more should be put in place for people in my position.”

28 May 2006

This article was originally posted on 28-May-2006, 07:46 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 28-May-2006, 07:48.