Scotland on Sunday reports
IAIN MORRISON ([email protected])


THE news that two of Glasgow's high-profile players were leaving the club at the end of this season was not entirely unexpected coming, as it did, on the back of a general exodus from the other two pro-teams. It was hard to keep that memorable front page of The Sun out of your mind, when Neil Kinnock was threatening to win a general election, and the red-top asked the last person out of Britain to turn the lights off.

By all accounts, Glasgow tried hard to keep both players. Rumours suggest that Rory Lamont actually agreed terms verbally but because the SRU delayed in securing his cross on paper the player changed his mind and went to Sale. Euan Murray is a local boy and had a tough decision: he was offered £100,000 to stay, but chose to follow in Tom Smith's footsteps with a move to Northampton, citing the two-time Lion as an inspiration.

Smith admitted that he met Murray after the Wales match but insists that he was not aware at the time that his club had made an approach.

"We had a chat after the match, but we didn't talk about him moving and I wasn't trying to persuade him to join since I didn't know at the time that we had an offer in," Smith confirmed. "I was asked for my opinion later and I said that I thought that Euan would do very well at Saints. He is certainly the right size for a tighthead, and he scrummaged exceptionally well against Wales."

Smith is coming to the end of his career and his contract has one more season to run, but it seems certain that the younger man will look for guidance from his childhood hero.

The veteran prop knows exactly what Murray has been going through these past few weeks since he was asked to make a similar decision when moving from Glasgow to Brive back in 1999.

"I am not involved in that side of things," said Smith, "but I don't think it was just about the money. We have 14,500 fans in Franklin's Gardens for each match, and every one has bought their season-ticket.

"They are all ardent Saints fans. Because the stadium is enclosed, the noise that they generate isn't much less than you would get at a full international.

"The Guinness Premiership is a tough league, and Euan is going to come up against the very best props every single week. There is no doubt that he'll return to play internationals for Scotland a better player than when he left. Northampton will look after him. They didn't take this step lightly and will have looked at all the angles. There was a while when hiring test players was not seen as a good idea but I think that there has been a necessary change of philosophy. Look at the three most successful clubs in England, Wasps, Leicester and Sale, and all of them have quite a few international players.

"Leicester are a good example. We beat them last weekend by one point after they had lost something like eight internationals, so they could blame the loss on their missing stars. But they have such a strong squad that they can afford to rotate the players anyway. They are still one of the best clubs in the league."

The same cannot be said of Northampton. Smith's team are still not safe from relegation, just seven points clear of Worcester with seven games to play.

The last thing that Murray needs is National One rugby next year, but the Midlands team should avoid the drop.

"Northampton won't do anything stupid like preventing Euan training with Scotland," Smith said. "The club wants him to be successful for Scotland because that means that he is becoming a better player. If he is not playing well for his club, he won't even be picked for Scotland.

"When the union is short of cash perhaps it isn't such a bad idea to see players leave Scotland and let someone else take the financial strain."

That is a debate that will rage across Scotland for the next few weeks as further defections are expected to be announced. A rumour persists that the mass migration south is at least partly in response to a meeting that was chaired by Gordon McKie a couple of weeks ago when the SRU boss refused to guarantee any jobs for the players after this season. This is understandable, perhaps, in light of the finances, but unsettling for individuals all the same.

And it isn't just Scotland that is in a state of flux, because the news broke in recent days that the RFU are hoping to centrally contract 32 senior players and another 32 junior ones, paying the clubs handsomely for the privilege. If this happens there is a danger that Scotland's exiles could be forced to turn out between Six Nations matches when their English counterparts are enjoying a well-earned, RFU-guaranteed, rest, a reversal of the current set-up.

"We are playing Gloucester this weekend," Smith countered, "and they are resting the Italian second-row Marco Bortolami. International players are a massive asset to any club but they need to be looked after and asking them to play club rugby in the middle of the Six Nations probably isn't that smart."

Like the skipper Bortolami, two- thirds of the Italian national team play abroad, so the mass exodus of Scottish players is not necessarily a disaster for the national team, but it will make it doubly difficult to generate interest in the second-class professional teams who are left behind.

Money is short but, as Murray's move proves, facilities remain the biggest stumbling block to pro-team success north of the Border. Until some enterprising council build a 10,000-seat stadium and offer to host a Scottish pro-team, they will remain the poor relations of rich English cousins.

This article was posted on 4-Mar-2007, 08:41 by Hugh Barrow.