SUNDAY TIMES REPORTS
Losing to Italy last week highlighted the shocking state of the Scottish game, with many players now heading abroad
Peter O’Reilly
THE COINCIDENCE was uncanny, the contrast painfully obvious. On Thursday afternoon, the Scottish Rugby Union released a statement confirming that Rory Lamont and Euan Murray, two of its most promising young players, had joined the exodus of Scottish players to England, France and Ireland.

At almost exactly the same time in Dublin, the Irish Rugby Football Union was unveiling plans for its select group of 12 young players to be careful monitored by the union’s High Performance Unit, the 12 Apostles as they’ve been dubbed. Five days after a tumultuous victory over England, here was the union’s succession strategy. The message was clear: no expense was being spared to ensure that the good times continue to roll.

In Scotland, meanwhile, no good times roll and all expenses have been cut. The national team was booed at Murrayfield last Saturday after the loss to Italy and the three district sides are up to their neck in it. Edinburgh have lost half-a-dozen internationals, with more on the way. The troops are leaving Glasgow, too, and complaining about the facilities as they go. Meanwhile, there is a danger that the Borders, the heartland of the Scottish game, may become a development district, if the professional squad survives at all. Worst of all is the mood of resignation in the Scottish game. Edinburgh’s response to the news that Simon Taylor was considering a move to Stade Français was to offer him half his current salary plus an incentive package. Whatever their public expressions of regret, the SRU clearly views the exodus as a means of reducing debt currently standing at £23m.

Some Irish rugby folk will find it hard to feel sympathy for a country that caused them annual misery from the late 1980s into the early part of this decade. Scotland punched above their weight. They had a system that worked. There was a consistency to their selection and a consistency of style from year to year, a style that filtered into the club game. While Ireland seemed to go through coaches at the rate of one a season, in Scotland Jim Tel-fer and Ian McGeechan were either in charge or nearby.

Professionalism complicated things. The Scots and the Irish faced similar problems: a club v district/province debate, uncertainty over how to fund the game. The IRFU claims credit for installing fully professional provincial squads, but professionalism was a couple of seasons old before it got around to it. The Scots did so, too, but couldn’t settle on a number of teams. One minute it was four, the next two.

The SRU has a history of financial mismanagement. Whereas its Irish counterparts took its time over the stadium issue, before getting assistance from the government and the Football Association of Ireland, in 1993 the Scots decided they could afford a new stadium without state assistance. They funded it largely by debentures and debt but because those debentures are mostly 30-year schemes, the SRU can’t take them back to the marketplace to clear its debt.

To be fair, they weren’t to know in 1993 that they would soon need to fund a professional sport. But we should not be too sympathetic. Chief executive Gordon McKie was shocked at the incompetence and malpractice unearthed by his first audit.

You wonder what the SRU are doing to create the next golden era. During last year’s Under19s World Cup in Dubai, national coach Frank Hadden considered calling the Scottish side home, such was the hammering they were taking. But we need the Scots. Just as Ireland can’t afford a Heineken Cup without French teams, we can’t afford a Magners League with joke-shop district sides. It’s in everyone’s interests that they sort out their mess.

This article was posted on 4-Mar-2007, 18:00 by Hugh Barrow.