THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

JOHN BEATTIE
ONE of my biggest gripes in life is the artificial preservation of anything. For example: the earnings of business people and the services they buy from the experts they deal with. There are accountants and lawyers surveyors in Glasgow and Edinburgh earning half a million pounds a year and lots more besides because they charge companies more than they really should for what aren't exactly earth shattering skills.

The companies are willing to pay this because they can then charge you and me, the ordinary punter, over the odds for their services in turn so that they can earn lots of money. I would like to start a monitoring unit with the power to say: "Actually, you are an overcharging little nerd and we will take this from you and give it to the people."

And then we have national boundaries. What on earth is a border? Many, many, thousands of years ago we all walked from Africa and the border between Scotland and England is an invention, drawn on the ground by greedy and power mad men and women who just wanted to rule something. We have more in common with the English than with anyone else, but the golden rule of life is that you only fight with people you know or live beside. And slag them off when you want to win votes.

Which brings me to seven-a-side rugby in a Scottish context, and the Barbarians. Both of whom I like as concepts, both of whom are offered up as major sources of entertainment, but both of whom aren't "real" in most senses of the word, or, at least, have changed so much as to make their original purpose redundant.

Let's start first with seven-a-side rugby. Now, I like seven-a-side rugby, I really do. I understand its use as a development tool, it looks good when great players play it, but I fully understand the SRU's decision not to continue fielding Scottish seven-a-side teams because the truth of the matter is that we just don't have enough good players to fill our own professional teams, and a seven-a-side squad as well. The end of the Scottish rugby season is ruined by the need to fit in Melrose sevens, Jed sevens, and all the rest of them because it's our tight forwards who need the practice, not the runners and the league season should be longer, not shorter. The artificial preservation of the sevens circuit in Scotland, and the money wasted on keeping our own sevens squad just cannot be long-term options.

Rather than thinking seven-a-side rugby is our most powerful development tool in this country, it should be viewed as what it is: one of the biggest impediments to progress in what is becoming a power game.

Which brings me to the Barbarians. Scotland's game against the Barbarians on Wednesday night is an important occasion for us because our national team is involved, but I feel cheated by the Barbarians who are putting out a weakened squad while their first team is in South Africa. Sorry, I really do. I think I said in the paper a week or so ago that nowadays players are invited to play for the Barbarians with the little carrot of the promise of a wad of notes amounting to not far off ten grand each for a couple of weeks work and that, to me, has killed it.

What next? Will the Baa-Baas be on a win bonus? Would different players be paid different amounts? What are the Barbarians actually all about unless they provide a platform for fun and friendship?

It is an important test for Scotland and should be treated as such, but, frankly, I would ditch the Barbarians fixture and play the Argentines, or a nation strapped for cash but offering a real international test for all the right reasons.

This article was posted on 29-May-2006, 07:21 by Hugh Barrow.