THE HERALD REPORTS

Plug pulled on Warriors franchise
KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer October 04 2006
PLANS by two leading figures in Scottish rugby to buy Glasgow Warriors, the city\'s professional team, have been abandoned because they could not secure financial support.
David Mackay, the former chairman of the Scottish Rugby Union, and Brian Simmers, the founder of current national champions Glasgow Hawks, have had to admit defeat because potential investors could not be convinced to back their plans for the three-year period that they believe was necessary.
The two, who joined forces earlier this year to bring private investment to the Glasgow team, yesterday said they were disappointed and \"worried\" about the future of the professional game in Scotland.
News of their failure comes as a further blow just a week after Gordon McKie, chief executive of the SRU who own the
Warriors, warned rugby fans in the Borders that the Reivers pro team was running out of time to prove it can generate the backing necessary to be viable.
Mackay, confirming that the Glasgow plan had foundered, told The Herald: \"Sadly, we have had to raise the white flag. Brian and I are very, very disappointed. Brian told Gordon McKie last night and I think he was disappointed, too.
\"We\'ve reached some peaks when we thought we were within a whisker of getting the commitments we needed to be able to make that trip to Murrayfield.\"
Mackay, the former chief executive of John Menzies plc, and Simmers, former owner of the Scottish Highland Hotels group, had put together a five-year plan. While prepared to invest money of their own, their plan required millions of pounds to let them run the business long enough to see whether they could take it into profit, even with continued support from the governing body.
Mackay said: \"There was a fair amount of interest in what we were looking to do, but most of it was for a year and no-one was prepared to back the project for three years which we believe was the minimum we needed.
\"We are grateful for the support we\'ve had but, realistically, it seems that at least for the present there is no future in doing what we were trying to do and that is worrying. It is great to see Edinburgh getting bigger crowds and winning but you need more than Edinburgh in Scottish rugby.\"
Multi-millionaire brothers Bob and Alex Carruthers took control of Edinburgh, who have dropped the Gunners tag from their name, in a five-year deal with the SRU in July.
Mackay and Simmers\' plans for the Warriors had been dependent on a series of meetings that took place during September. Mackay said: \"We were speaking to two potential corporate backers and one private individual. The individual was making the right noises but needed at least one of the corporates to come on board and they did not. No-one was able to break our business plan down, but nor were they willing to look far enough ahead to see that we could make a profit two or three years down the line.\"
He added: \"I fear for the professional teams [in Scotland] but then I always did fear for professional rugby. The Borders have a great tradition but no support and tradition doesn\'t pay the wages. Glasgow should be one of the strongest brands in the UK and we believed we could do it, but it does not seem that the support is there.
\"We could see Glasgow getting 5000 spectators in a couple of years and, based at the new Scotstoun, you could really see where that would start to pay for itself, but we had to have the finance in place to cover the period until that was the case.\"
He said he had nothing but praise for the local politicians who had given their backing to the project and that he was \"particularly disappointed on behalf of Glasgow City Council, who walked the mile for us.\"

It is time for hard-headed business
KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer October 04 2006
Rugby: The necessary combination of goodwill and finance to make professional rugby profitable in Scotland does not exist outside Edinburgh.
The message could not be clearer after the withdrawal of the Mackay/Simmers plan to take ownership of Glasgow Warriors out of the Scottish Rugby Union's hands.
Following hard on the heels of the dire warnings of Gordon McKie, the SRU's chief executive, when outlining the fiscal realities facing the professional game last week, his organisation now knows Murrayfield is on its own.
Private investors may have been found to back the Edinburgh team playing at the national stadium, but that these two men (Bob and Alex Carruthers) in particular could not source the money needed suggests it cannot be done elsewhere.
Since the sport went open in 1995, Brian Simmers – first through the district set-up, then in forming Glasgow Hawks from GHK and Glasgow Accies, and now with this attempt to assemble a consortium capable of buying the Warriors – seems to have investigated every conceivable way of turning rugby into a major spectator sport in the nation's biggest city. Mackay's dedication to rugby has, meanwhile, been remarkable given the way he was wronged when ousted from office as then SRU chairman last year.
Yet what was always obvious was that, unlike Edinburgh, where Murrayfield has been the leading sporting venue since being opened 80 years ago and where the national rugby team has always had its home, football completely dominates the Glasgow sporting scene.
Admittedly, a powerful intellectual argument can be made that a rugby team involved in regular cross-border competition offers a brand that would be a far more useful promotional tool for Glasgow than the Old Firm with all their baggage.
Glasgow City Council's enthusiastic support might even be interpreted as supporting that idea, but for all the many FPs of rugby- playing private schools who work in the city's financial institutions and big corporations, not enough care enough about the game, it seems.
Meanwhile, as McKie noted last week, all the talk of passion for the sport in the Borders being sufficient to overcome its logistical shortcomings – lack of population and commercial infrastructure – has proven to be just that, talk.
Previously, a bid fronted by Kenny Logan, the former Scotland winger, which would have moved the Warriors to Stirling, had also fallen by the wayside.
Whether in Glasgow, Galashiels, Stirling or, for that matter, Aberdeen or Perth, what is being asked of Scottish businessmen, not usually regarded as the most cavalier people on the planet, is that they take a massive gamble on what is almost a social experiment.
The challenge is to turn what has always been a players' game in Scotland – and let no-one suggest otherwise for all the heady talk of "regular 5000 crowds at club games" 10 or 20 years ago – into a spectator sport?
Even in Edinburgh, where Murrayfield has been regularly filled to 67,500 capacity for international matches since being rebuilt and which hosted world record six-figure crowds in the not too distant, less safety-conscious past, there is not yet any guarantee of success.
Attendances at Magners League matches there this season have been encouraging, with close to 10,000 through the stadium's turnstiles so far, but an average crowd of 3300 would hardly excite treasurers at the bottom of the Bank of Scotland Premierleague.
If there was any sense of complacency within the rugby community that the Carruthers brothers' investment in Edinburgh meant the pressure was off after the warning earlier this year that one of the professional teams could be axed, the failure of this latest bid to buy Glasgow Warriors should, then, refocus minds.
Sums are being re-calculated and this time no amount of sentiment based on nostalgic memories of past glories or romantic visions of the future can be allowed to enter the equation.

In the light of these developments it is worth pondering on the submission made by Glasgow Hawks in 1999 to the Commons Select Committee investigating the advent of professionalism in rugby union


1999 -Hawks submission to Commons Select Committee

How has it stood the test of time ?

Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence

APPENDIX 14



Memorandum submitted by Glasgow Hawks Rugby Football Club Limited
INTRODUCTION

It has been less than two years since Rugby Union became "professional" and during that period of time it seems that every rule in acceptable and established business practice has been broken.


English club owners offered remuneration packages, which attracted rugby legends worldwide, and either bankrupted their clubs or created benchmarks which other Unions tried to match irrespective of financial affordability.


As a result investments are being made in rugby which can never be justified.


Youngsters are plucked out of employment and universities with income offers which are short term and are being accepted as an alternative to working.


Many of these youngsters have since been made redundant or are accepting employment with minimal security and career structure.


The employers, whether private or Union, are unconcerned especially if it provides them with a short period of glory and ego massaging.


We have the privilege of witnessing the birth of a new sport—"Professional Rugby Union".


We should be treating it accordingly—with sensitivity and the benefit of experience, which should acknowledge the successes and failures of both business practice and other team sports.


To date every element of that experience has been ignored.


PROPOSAL

Governing Bodies


It is interesting to note that no Northern Hemisphere country has seen fit to change the structure of its governing body since the advent of professionalism.


Only Scotland has a review study in process under the Chairmanship of Lord MacKay.


In Scotland the election of amateur rugby people continues in the hope that they will have the business acumen to handle a turnover of £20 million and the expertise required in financial, marketing, personnel and rugby related matters which includes the co-ordination of a professional workforce—employees and players—and an unpaid voluntary workforce of some 2,000 hard working individuals who are critical to recruitment and development of youngsters throughout the country.


In Scotland the withdrawal of Tennents, the clubs' League and Cup sponsors after one year of their three year contract and a steady trickle of resignations from the SRU are apparently of little concern to those running the game.


Their focus is totally on representative and international rugby with the result that club rugby is ignored and reduced to a level of mediocrity with no concern or apparent interest in the voluntary administration who will eventually fade from the game.


Loss of club membership, spectators, sponsorship and players is the current trend.


It is impossible to grow the game from the top.


Rugby needs highly paid, highly qualified businessmen as Executive Directors of a complex sporting structure to manage rugby and co-ordinate all levels and ages of the game throughout Scotland.


A non-Executive Board of businessmen and club association representatives is required as the information link between schools, youth and club rugby, the organisation of representative and international rugby and the Executive Board.


A seamless structure is essential to allow ambitious youngsters to move from school to international level.


We should therefore develop "area" clubs providing a focus for groups or associations of clubs and schools and attracting sponsorship from local authorities, companies and communities.


These area clubs will develop naturally in the rugby populations of Scotland and should be supported and encouraged by the SRU with finance, personnel and time.


Their flexibility in size would allow development to compete outwith Scotland.


This structure would be financially viable and involve large numbers of clubs and players and equally important commercial interest.


The total involvement and support of the SRU is critical.


Rugby is not a big enough game to justify the current level of remuneration being paid, particularly in England, and governing bodies should therefore work with clubs to ensure their finance and personnel attracts further local and national financial support and targets large areas of the country's rugby populations.


This will maximise growth and development of rugby within a financially viable framework.


PLAYERS

Players must have a responsibility to their chosen rugby career and the development of their sport.


Likewise employers must be responsible for their employees.


It is questionable whether or not rugby needs to be a fully professional game ie full-time rugby.


Players should develop in every aspect of the game—playing, coaching, sport management, recruitment, working with schools etc.


In addition they should be given the opportunity to develop other skills or their chosen career for life after rugby.


There is a serious danger of youngsters leaving school for a rugby career to the total exclusion of further education. This has to be addressed.


SUMMARY

It is essential that rugby as a professional and amateur sport is financially sustainable.


It is equally important that the link between amateur and professional is strong and that professionalism does not destroy the sport by ignoring its roots.


Small rugby playing countries like Scotland should rewrite the rugby map by identifying sufficiently strong rugby playing populations within it.


Clubs and the SRU must co-operate and co-ordinate their efforts to maximise the development of their "areas" with:



— Recruitment in every school.

— Development of players and coaches to the highest levels.

— Marketing of "areas" to individuals, companies, local authorities etc.

— Creation of Business Plans to establish objectives and financial requirements of each "area".

— Players contracted by SRU must play, coach, recruit, manage and market in "area".

— SRU should assist with personnel, time and finance in supporting development and marketing of game in each "area".

— "Areas" should be club/SRU driven not SRU owned.
With all of the above in place Scotland will ensure that the development of the game is professionally grown and that all levels participate.


This "area" structure is also flexible as it can expand for domestic growth or contract (combine "areas") for competition in Europe.


It is financially viable and maximises revenue from private and public sources.


Rugby can only be grown through proactive efforts at grass-roots level—schools and local communities—not through concentration on remote elitism


June 1999

This article was originally posted on 4-Oct-2006, 07:18 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 4-Oct-2006, 07:24.