Carruthers brothers’ move on Edinburgh gunners offers glimmer of hope
The SRU’s bombshell will give professional players a new sense of optimism, believes Alasdair Reid

With expletives deleted, the scene in the plushly understated surroundings of the Murrayfield hospitality suite last Monday might have done justice to an HM Bateman cartoon entitled “The Day The SRU Issued An Interesting Press Release”. As journalists scanned the documents they had been given, their eyebrows shot upwards and their animation levels reached heights more commonly provoked by the rejection of expenses claims.

After all, the expectation had been that the previous evening’s summons to Murrayfield implied nothing more than a bland briefing from the nothing-continues-to-happen school of media relations. Bear in mind that for almost a decade the union’s official position had been that they were willing to negotiate with outside investors, and an awful lot of nothing had happened in that time. The last thing we expected to hear was that a breakthrough had finally been made.

Breakthrough? Make that a bombshell. In a few terse paragraphs the SRU announced a deal had been struck for a consortium nobody had heard of to take control of the side nobody imagined would ever pass into private hands. It would be a considerable understatement to say that 45-year-old Bob Carruthers and his younger brother Alex crept under the radar in making their move on the Edinburgh Gunners, more accurate to call it a development of quite astonishing stealth.

That the move was kept under wraps, from its initial conception at a meeting between the Carruthers brothers and SRU chief executive Gordon McKie in early June to its completion last weekend, was all the more remarkable given the union’s history of leaking like a rusty sieve in such matters.

A more watertight governing body will be less entertaining for those of us in rugby’s fourth estate, but it will also be a tribute to McKie’s professionalism and the more businesslike habits his arrival has engendered.

His combination of speed and discretion is more pertinent still given the sloth-like progress of other potential investors. It is now almost 18 months since Aberdeen businessman Graham Burgess raised his head above the par apet as a potential source of funding, but progress has been hard to discern.

Alex Carruthers, the former Kirkcaldy full-back whose brief professional career with Caledonia Reds was ended when the SRU cut four pro teams to two in 1998, takes over as executive chairman of Edinburgh Rugby Ltd. Confirmation of a coaching appointment had been expected to follow hard on the heels of his arrival, but Adrian Kennedy, the former Ulster and Northampton assistant coach who had been front-runner for the role, has now moved out of that picture.

At least one new name has been added to the mix, however, with confirmation that Graeme Stirling, another with a strong rugby background, will be managing director.

Significantly, McKie said the money brought in by the Carruthers and their backers would do nothing to reduce the core debt of the union, now understood to be more than £23 million.

McKie has stressed that that figure will only be lowered by some form of capital release. However, he has all but ruled out the suggestion that for sale signs will be attached to Murrayfield Stadium itself, the complexity of any leaseback arrangement making such a deal unattractive.

In short, the financial squeeze is still on, its grip tightest around the necks of those involved with the Glasgow and Borders sides. If players at those teams felt relief to return to work on Monday and be greeted with news of the Carruthers deal rather than a pile of P45s, McKie still emphasised that the search for other investors should go on. Yet the Edinburgh arrangement has already bought the sport time to do things properly, rather than be railroaded into making hasty deals.

“It’s a plus from that point of view,” said Glasgow Hawks founder Brian Simmers, pictured, who, in partnership with former SRU chief David Mackay, has been trying to assemble a funding package for Glasgow Warriors. “It has established that the union are serious about going through with this kind of thing, because at one stage there was a feeling that Edinburgh was sacrosanct and wouldn’t be touched.

“Most importantly what has happened has bought us more time, as the previous timescale was hellish tight, especially with the confidentiality agreement that really prevented us from letting people know that we were interested in doing something similar for Glasgow.

“We believe we have the right framework. We’ve got the city council back on board because they’re still in a position to go forward with their plans for rugby and athletics at the Scotstoun stadium.

“Our approach is that we need to strengthen the Warriors, particularly the marketing side of things, and develop links with schools and the wider community.”

The most cursory knowledge of rugby’s brief and chequered history as a professional sport is suff icient to realise that investors should not be judged on their opening salvoes of publicity but on their long-term commitment. But if there was something toe-curlingly twee about McKie’s description of the Carruthers brothers as “genuine rugby people”, it must also be acknowledged that genuine rugby people, those with a more than passing affection for the game, have been behind the most successful developments at top English clubs over the past 10 years.

In Dave Thompson at Newcastle and Brian Kennedy at Sale, the Carruthers will find both a wealth of experience and the willingness to pass it on.

Time will be their judge. But they could hardly do worse than the union, whose stewardship of Scotland’s professional clubs has amounted to a cat alogue of execrable failure. McKie’s most significant contribution has been to wake up to that fact, and to do something about it.

This article was posted on 17-Jul-2006, 21:34 by Hugh Barrow.