End of the line for shamateurs who demeaned our fine game

IAIN MORRISON REPORTS IN SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

AS THOUGH to prove that there is one, sure, unshakable truth to grasp in an ever-changing world, the Scottish Rugby Union upheld its long-standing reputation for incompetence last week when an e-mail outlining the working party’s recommendations on governance was sent out in error to each and every development officer in the land fully 24 hours before the news was supposed to be released to an eager public.

This was swiftly followed up by another e-mail that instructed the recipients not to open their previous message, a plea that was (entirely predictably) largely ignored.

At least the mail held good news for once because the working party under Sheriff Bill Dunlop has at last grasped the nettle and given the future of Scottish rugby into the hands of the new Scottish Rugby Board. For that they are due our collective and eternal thanks. As are Heriot’s Rugby Club and their numerous other co-agitators, the men without whose insistence the whole issue would have been swept under the carpet once again.

The general committee did not want governance even debated and the issue was only pushed to the top of the agenda at the clubs’ insistence.

Once the clubs have signed off on the new structure, as they surely will, the search will start for a new chief executive, after which Scottish rugby can vote for the members of the new-look Scottish Rugby Council. This is the true blessing, and the only good thing to have come out of this whole sorry episode.

The new council needs to start from scratch with a president, elected and respected, at its head and a fresh intake of members to serve the game in place of those whose hands are apparently more sullied than their collective conscience.

The fact that one such character has today been revealed as the man who insulted Scottish rugby’s main sponsor and didn’t feel the need to bother with so much as a letter of apology when that sponsor wrote to the union to register her disquiet, comes as no surprise to rugby insiders who have long swapped stories of excess amongst committee men, with Colin Fisher featuring in dispatches on a regular basis. His reward is a place on the executive board that runs Scottish rugby on a day-to-day basis, which only proves that the wages of sin are promotion.

His attitude was to treat the entire union as his own personnel fiefdom and it was Fisher, naturally enough, who made the now infamous remark about being in the dairy business because: "I’m milking the SRU for all I can get".

There is evidence, though, that times are changing. London Scottish have made it clear that should their proposed motion to have an exiles representative on the new committee be accepted, that person will not be Fisher. Even more hard line are the Friends of Scottish Rugby, whose three-year six-figure funding of the proposed Academy at London Scots is explicitly dependent on Fisher not being involved.

Yet Fisher’s conduct alone is not the issue - he is simply the personification of the sort of problems that occur when men are given power without responsibility, although the clubs must share the burden of blame. Many of them were well aware of the actions of individuals on their own governing body - no-one has forgotten the bus trip in France - and yet not one was willing to take the responsibility to remove this poison from Scottish rugby once and for all.

Fisher’s attitude was emblematic of the insular and self-serving culture that has dominated the general committee for decades. Rather than leading Scottish rugby into a new era, the committee embraced professional rugby as though it were a leper, not that that stopped them voting themselves on to the payroll, a nonsense that Lord Mackay halted. Instead of visionaries to lead the way, the game has suffered under the guidance of men motivated by self-interest. In the place of integrity we have had Colin Fisher and his ilk.

Fisher was one of the agitators central to the dismissal of David Mackay and the subsequent repercussions that, difficult to believe, brought our off-field standing even lower than Scottish rugby’s ranking on the pitch. When blessed with two radical modernisers of unquestioned integrity in Mackay and Phil Anderton, Scotland’s rugby clubs limply allowed their own committee men to chase the pair out of the game without even the pretense of a Plan B to cover their shame.

A couple of months after Mackay’s and Anderton’s removal, Scottish rugby has adopted the bulk of their policies and, at the next sgm, will surely ratify a system of governance that is almost identical to the one proposed by the departed duo. It is difficult to conclude that the entire sordid business perpetuated by Fisher and his co-conspirators was anything other than totally unnecessary. Remind me again why Mackay was sacked?

The answer lies in the bloated, inflated egos of those that were allowed to fester far too long, unhindered by public scrutiny, on the general committee of the SRU.

This article was posted on 6-Mar-2005, 08:55 by Hugh Barrow.