Edinburgh Evening News reports
BILL LOTHIAN

SOME of Scotland\'s leading rugby clubs were unfairly forced by the SRU to abandon dreams of setting up professionally, a top official has claimed.

The former chairman of Scottish Premiership Rugby, Kenny Hamilton, made the accusation while addressing the issue of club versus country fixtures clashes such as will occur again this Saturday when Scotland face the Pacific Islands at Murrayfield.

He said: \"Clubs have been driven down an \'amateur\' route.

\"So it is unreasonable to expect players to take time off work to fulfil league commitments or travel a distance on Friday nights after working all week and return home at three in the morning.\"

The fact that Hamilton places the word \"amateur\" in inverted commas suggests that an element of hypocrisy still engulfs the game a decade after the \"shamateur\" era was supposed to have ended with the arrival of professionalism.

Looking to the future, Hamilton, who rejects the idea of Sunday rugby as a compromise, calls for a redrafting of the club programme to avoid any future fixture clashes.

He says: \"The scheduling of the league season and other competitions is a matter for the new Competitions Commission but let me suggest some of the major considerations.

\"The season is too long - the league started on August 28 with warm-up matches in early August. The Cup final is at the end of April - a nine-month season.

\"If you add sevens in May and pre-season training in June it becomes an 11 to 12-month season.

\"The league starts too early - the quality of rugby in the early part of the league was dis- appointing.

\"Can we avoid international weekends? Let us hope the Competitions Commission can bring forward some early recommendations.\"

Hamilton\'s remarks coincide with an SRU statement pledging to address the issue and admitting to a \"disappointing\" attendance of just over 12,000 against Romania last weekend. The statement said: \"It is hoped there will be no club fixtures clashing with Scotland\'s popular home games against England and France in 2008.\"

This article was posted on 16-Nov-2006, 14:25 by Hugh Barrow.