SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS
By Alisdair Reid
Just as Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to spend eternity pushing a rock to the top of a mountain, so Scottish rugby seems to have a habit of repeating past mistakes. Will we ever learn from the past?
Comment
IF THERE is any truth in George Santayana's much-quoted claim that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it, then even the most cursory examination of the current rugby landscape would persuade you that the sport is in the hands of people who are not exactly quick on the uptake.

There was a strong sense of déjà vu - although weary familiarity might be a more precise description - on that Groundhog Day at Murrayfield less than two weeks ago when the SRU revealed a bold new plan for rugby's future that looked, to more seasoned commentators at least, remarkably similar to the bold new plan they had first fashioned in 1998.

On such occasions, professional observers of Scottish rugby tend to think Sisyphus got off rather lightly when Zeus ordered him to spend eternity pushing his famous rock uphill, as the business of chronicling the machinations, meltdowns and unrelenting turmoil of the sport in recent years has added up to an altogether more frustrating and repetitive task.

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The dreadful symmetry of it all could scarcely have had a more exquisitely ironic setting than Edinburgh's Caledonian Hotel, the venue for the gathering on Thursday evening when campaigners to save the Border Reivers lambasted the SRU, under the presidency of Andy Irvine, for their short-sighted policies. That would be the very same Caledonian Hotel where, nine years earlier, the very same Andy Irvine had memorably called a press conference to, er, lambast the SRU for their short-sighted policies.

So it was, then, we returned to that grandiose setting, with its rich gilts, its trompe l'oeil backdrops and its elaborate chandeliers, to be regaled with plans that were, perversely and appositely, alarmingly short of substance.

It would be wrong, at this stage, to rain too heavily on the parade assembled by Graham Garvie, the Peebles councillor and former Edinburgh director who is leading the rescue bid; but it would be more remiss still to raise the hopes of the Reivers players or their small, stoic band of supporters by hailing a project in which too many fundamental questions have still to be answered.

Even those answers which been forthcoming have not exactly fuelled the conviction that a Phoenix is set to rise from the ashes on the banks of the Tweed or the byways of rural Berwickshire. Garvie's outline plan is for a development side based on the model of Connacht, but its proposed budget of £1.2 million is far short of the sum that the Irish Cinderella province has to work with.

Garvie's argument is that to keep a professional side in the Borders in any shape or form is far better than allowing it to wither away and die. If the life support system is switched off, he says, any possibility of reviving the patient in the future is lost. Yet the correct analogy for a side operating at the sort of financial level he proposes is not so much a condition of suspended animation, but a permanent vegetative state.

Even Steve Bates, the estimable Reivers coach, has questioned the wisdom of running a development side that would be nothing more than cannon fodder for other teams in the Magners League.

Bates has worked tirelessly in adversity during his three seasons at Netherdale, but there was something about his demeanour the other day that told you he knows the fight is over, that the patient would be better put out of its misery. Those who watched the feeble 53-11 capitulation to Llanelli might have detected something of the same outlook in the body language of the Reivers players.

The ebullient Garvie appears scornful of those who do not share his relentlessly optimistic approach to the project, but the Field-of-Dreams reasoning that has marked his improbable emergence as the Kevin Costner of Borders sport fails to take into account the inconvenient realities of attracting an audience. If you build it they will come' was a nice line in a movie, but it would be a crashingly inaccurate commentary on the troubled life of the Reivers thus far.

It is also, a startling state of affairs that the area should suddenly have discovered a passion for professional rugby that has been inconspicuous over the past few seasons. The bleating that has accompanied the Reivers' demise will be of little comfort to players who might have preferred a few more throaty decibels at their home games instead.

Local politicians - surely their ardour has nothing to do with next month's council elections - have queued up to pledge support for the side, while the closure issue has filled pages of local newspapers that rarely troubled themselves with the team's affairs in the past.

Yet Scottish rugby should take little pleasure from the demise of a side in what ought to be the country's exemplar region. It is a fair criticism the sport has been over-reliant on the Borders in the past, but retrenchment to the central belt bases of Edinburgh and Glasgow places the game firmly back in those areas where rugby is still bedevilled by an image of being the pursuit of a social elite. The geography of rugby in the Borders might have been unsustainable, but its inclusive demography has been a shining example to the country as a whole.

Nor has the manner of the Reivers' demise reflected well on their Murrayfield paymasters. Even those who defend the SRU's decision to axe the team as a matter of commercial inevitability would struggle to persuade anyone that the closure has been handled with anything other than catastrophic insensitivity.

As my old mathematics teachers used to say, it's not enough to get the right answer, you have to show you got there by the correct path. In that regard, the governing body has failed dismally.

The Union has made it all too easy for critics to suggest, as the Reivers players have, that the team was "set up to fail", or, as Garvie's group have claimed, that the SRU review of professional rugby that led to the closure decision involved "not a single soul outside the SRU board room".

An SRU spokeswoman last week rubbished that accusation, but would not say who had been consulted on the basis the information was "commercially confidential". Presumably, it had slipped her mind that the Union is still the governing body of a sport, with all the obligations of transparency that involves, and not a used car outlet.

It has also handled the fall-out from the Reivers' closure with staggering clumsiness. Since the crass strap-line of the initial announcement - Warriors Pro Team Strengthened as Border Reivers Closes - the Union has embarked on a series of tit-for-tat spats with individual newspapers and needless press release exchanges with Edinburgh Rugby, when a dignified silence was required.

As the old saying goes, it is often better to say nothing and be considered a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt; the SRU would have done itself a huge favour by adopting a more circumspect approach.

Even those failings only served to strengthen the impression the sport had taken a lurch back in time.

The most powerful indication rugby had learned nothing from its first, fraught decade as a professional sport came on Thursday when it was confirmed English and French clubs will play no part in next season's European competitions. The one achievement of the modern era from which northern hemisphere rugby could take real pride had just added to the cesspit of shame in which all other embarrassments reside.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the arguments between France's Ligue Nationale clubs and England's Guinness Premiership sides and their respective governing bodies - most of which centre on the division of shares and voting rights in the tournaments - one certainty is European rugby will be drastically diminished as a result. Another is that the funds available to the SRU to finance professional rugby will also be savagely cut, the best estimate being in the region of £2.4m.

It is against that backdrop, rather than the enthusiasm of a few individuals, that the viability of rescuing the Reivers must be judged. It is a fundamental component of the Garvie plan that the side would take around £800,000 from the European pot - money that will not be available if the English and French sides stick to their guns.

Garvie claimed on Thursday he had a plan B that would cover a shortfall that amounts to two-thirds of the side's budget. Yet if he can lay his hands on the best part of a million pounds at short notice, you have to wonder why the sum is not being added to plan A. Then, at least, the Reivers might stand an outside chance of being competitive.

As it is, with most of their players in daily contact with their agents in a desperate search for new employment, the feeling around Netherdale is that the game is finally up.

This article was posted on 8-Apr-2007, 07:31 by Hugh Barrow.