The Herald reports


KEVIN FERRIE, chief rugby writer September 27 2006
Gordon McKie, the chief executive of the SRU, has told Borderers to put their money where their mouths are if they want to continue to be involved in professional rugby.
He said the Border Reivers pro team is running out of time to prove it can generate the backing necessary to be viable, and explained that the Borders Council's failure to make financial assurances had contributed to the decision to abandon plans to host an international sevens tournament in Melrose next year.
The two issues strengthen the view that the Borders, the heartland of the game in Scotland when rugby was amateur, cannot adapt to the open era.
Attendances at Reivers games have been poor, despite the SRU lowering ticket prices, returning matches to Friday nights and recruiting more international players. Borders also have the European Cup to look forward to this season.
"Despite all of these things we've got lamentable attendances," he said. "That for me is a big issue. The support for the Reivers within the Borders community is something that's really giving me cause for concern. Ultimately there comes a stage when we ask, 'What more can we do here?'"
He gave his full support to the work being done by the Steve Bates and his coaching team. Bates has had to hand over the reins of the Scotland A team to Henry Edwards for November's meeting with Australia such is his workload.
Only 250 season tickets have been sold compared with 460 a year ago, while the total number at Friday's game was only 1088, down around 200 on their season's opener.
The challenge facing the new Borders board, whose chairman David Kilshaw was appointed earlier this month, is clear. When it was put to McKie that the low attendances could be down to lack of marketing he was almost contemptuous.
"Let's be frank, everybody in the Borders knows that Reivers exist, they know where they play, they know the games are on, but they choose not to go," said McKie. "It's easy to blame Murrayfield for everything. Borders have got to take control of their own destiny."
Reivers and Glasgow Warriors have been given targets this season of an average home gate of 2500 with the implication of failure obvious.
There has been some atmosphere at Glasgow's Hughenden and the attendance for their second home match was up by a third on their first, even though they started the season with two defeats; Reivers fans have more to prove.
"As a board we believe pro teams are absolutely central to the future of the national team so I'd like to keep three teams in Scotland," McKie said.
"Ideally we don't want to reduce the base for reasons of affordability, but we are concerned with what's going on down there so I am really urging the Borders communities to get behind their team and help Steve and his boys."
McKie said the decision was made to change the bid for the World Sevens Circuit so that it would be staged at Murrayfield rather than Melrose in 2007 because promises had fallen through. Event Scotland, Borders Enterprise and Borders Council had tried to support the staging of the tournament, but McKie said there were various reasons a deal was not made.
Without allocating blame, he said that though the expected benefit to the area was estimated at £2m - £5m, the council did not formally assure the SRU that they would underwrite the tournament's expected losses of around £500,000.
"There are no hard feelings. They meant extremely well," he said. "However, we can't use half a million pounds of our money to give them a two-day event just because it's the home of sevens."

This article was posted on 27-Sep-2006, 07:04 by Hugh Barrow.