THE HERALD REPORTS

Scottish club rugby comes under scrutiny as never before this weekend with a high-powered delegation, which is seeking to overhaul the way the sport is played, having arrived in the country to watch matches in the Scottish Hydro Electric Premier 1 Super Cup.

Under the chairmanship of Bill Nolan, Scotland's International Rugby Board council member, the working party includes Ian McIntosh, the former Springboks coach, Pierre Villepreux, who guided France to the 1999 World Cup final, and Graham Mourie, the former All Black captain.

Perhaps most feted of all involved, though, is Rod Macqueen, one of the sport's true visionaries who first made his name at elite level by taking the ACT Brumbies from formation in 1996 to the 1997 Super 12 final, an astonishing feat.

He subsequently guided Australia to the 1999 World Cup, as well as back-to-back Tri-Nations Championship titles and a Test series win over the 2001 British and Irish Lions.

Yet, six years after his retirement from coaching the Wallabies when they beat the Lions, his true love for the sport emerged as, having just completed a 26-hour flight halfway round the planet to watch Ayr v Boroughmuir, we discussed his career highlights.

"Obviously, the World Cup was the goal we targeted and to be world champions is really great for the team," he said. "Beating the Lions was different because it was the first time we probably weren't as prepared as the opposition were. Probably the most enjoyable game, though, was one we lost: an All Blacks game when, in the first leg of the Bledisloe Cup, we were 24 points behind within five minutes, then turned it around by half-time only to lose in the dying moments. That was a really enjoyable game of rugby."

Perhaps only someone who has enjoyed such success could see it that way but to rank a defeat so high perhaps outlines why he is so well placed to be involved in this group. Some of the changes they are proposing have aroused controversy, but he is proud of the methods employed in seeking to improve the sport's appeal.

"We've been going through this for more than a year now, so this is all part of an ongoing process to get it right," he stressed. "To me, whatever final decisions come out of this, it will be the best researched group of decisions for a very long time, which we needed.

"The good thing is that we've taken a step back, taken a lot of the laws out and looked at why they are there. From day one there's been an absolute belief among all of us that we can do something here and there was a need.

"Rugby has been professional for 10 years and is quite unusual in business because we've had a revolution with everything happening so fast and coaches now studying games seven days a week yet, as a sport, we've got evolutionary procedures in place."

It has been well-documented that following an initial experi-ment at South Africa's Stellenbosch University, the next step has been to introduce a full set of these law variations into this Scottish club competition.

The various panel members have kept in touch by DVD and e-mail with how the Scottish teams are dealing with them and it would be precipitate of them to make too many bold predictions about which are likely to be implemented. "We don't want to over-react, but we're finding some very positive things coming out of this and the game appears to be quite a bit simpler at this stage," said Macqueen.

Players and those coaches willing to embrace change, have spoken of improved enjoyment too. "In Australia, we're playing some, though not all, of the experimental laws in a club tournament and again the players and coaches are very, very positive," Macqueen noted.

When pushed he said he believed that the change forcing backs to stay five metres behind the back foot of scrums, would definitely be brought in. "It opens up a lot of opportunities and it's very easy to police,"he added.

As the rest of the panel began to roll in it was clear that Macqueen's passion for the sport is undimmed and he is clearly among like-minded men. Anyone looking to discard the conclusions they come to when they present their findings next year, had better have done their homework.

1:50am today



By KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer

This article was posted on 24-Mar-2007, 08:21 by Hugh Barrow.