THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS
DAVID FERGUSON
THE BORDERS rescue plan is on the verge of collapse after it emerged that the Scottish Rugby Union is not prepared to hand over to private owners a share of the monies it receives from the European Rugby Cup and the Magners League.

The SRU is understood to receive just over £2.1 million from ERC for participating in the Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup, and another £600,000 for involvement in the Magners League. A team of Borders businessmen has been working with the Scottish Borders Council over the past fortnight, since the SRU announced its intention to close the borders team at the end of this season, to firm up a plan to take the Borders off the SRU's hands and run the team privately.

SBC's involvement did not stretch to spending taxpayers' cash, but the council is driving a new programme of sports facilities in the region with Netherdale in Galashiels, the current home of the Border Reivers, at its centre. Provided the Borders community could share with the rugby team facilities such as new grass and all-weather pitches, changing rooms, indoor halls and gyms - in the way most French clubs operate - the council could inject significant funding.

The rescue team has quickly pulled together a significant six-figure sum in new income/investment, but without a one-third share of the European and Magners League monies the plan loses credibility because the financial gap becomes too wide to bridge.

The campaign to save the team now looks doomed to failure, with the loss hammered home by the confirmation that Chris Cusiter, the best player in the Borders team, has agreed to join French team Perpignan next season.

David Kilshaw, who heads the Borders board and is a member of the rescue team, said last night: "I don't know if there is any hope, but we are still pursuing various avenues and will continue to do all we can to keep professional rugby alive in the Borders.

"It will be up to the board of the SRU to decide on whether they will or will not accept what we propose in terms of a recovery plan."

Revenue streams are at the heart of the ongoing dispute between Edinburgh's new owners and the SRU. Bob Carruthers, the Edinburgh owner, insists he has been granted one quarter of the competition monies the SRU receives when he should receive one third. Carruthers now claims that revenue from the European and Magners League do not actually belong to the SRU, but to Edinburgh Rugby.

"I'm sick of listening to rubbish," said Carruthers. "We own the Heineken Cup monies 100 per cent and that is why we are now taking legal action.

"When we signed the deal the SRU lawyers drew up on 7 July, 2006, they assigned to us the contracts covering the Heineken Cup, European Challenge Cup and Magners League monies.

"We have been through it with a fine tooth comb. After seven months of trying to negotiate over what is legally ours we are now heading into the courts."

When asked if Edinburgh did 'own' the ERC and Magners contracts, an SRU spokesperson stated: "That is absolutely categorically not the case; the SRU own the contracts."

She would not be drawn on why the union would not release a third share of the European and Magners monies to help a franchised Borders team, but added: "We have had private meetings with the council and a follow-up last Friday with Mike Gray [Borders rescue plan chairman], to give them all sorts of information that might be helpful for them to go away and look into the matter. We have not heard anything back from that group yet and until we do so it would be premature to discuss such details."

The whole issue of European competition revenue could of course become irrelevant if English and French clubs follow through with their plans to withdraw from next season's Heineken Cup.

Carruthers is certainly not flavour of the month at Murrayfield, but he remains passionate about his ability to help.

He added: "If the SRU wanted to we could sort this out to benefit Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Borders in no time. I would enthusiastically hand each a third-share of the ERC and Magners money and help the Borders with a bit more myself; the SRU's own by-law would allow me to have a 25 per cent stake in another club.

"I see no reason for the Borders rescue plan to be dead in the water. Give them their share of the ERC and Magners money, £900,000, and add that to the sponsorship they have uncovered and some extra private investment from me and others - and I believe that once out from under the auspices of the SRU people in the Borders would get behind it - you have enough for a credible business plan to take the Borders team forward.

"My priority is Edinburgh, particularly after the dreadful result at Cardiff on Saturday, but anyone who knows Scottish rugby knows how vital it is to have three teams, four, hopefully, to create real competition, excitement, attraction about pro rugby in Scotland and bring through the talent for the national team."

The SRU, whose leading figures reiterated their plan to scrap the Borders and shift the funding to Glasgow at a meeting of Borders clubs on Tuesday night, continue with the depressingly bleak picture that Scottish rugby is in dire financial straits and has no other way out of the current mess.

Carruthers added: "Professional rugby is not dying in Scotland, as Allan Munro, Andy Irvine and Gordon McKie seem to believe. We've beaten European champions Munster this season, attracted the highest crowd ever for a European match in Scotland, contributed more players to the international squads, have 34 players signed up and have just sent out 300,000 leaflets on season tickets for next season. It's not easy, but we're building.

"We have taken £1 million of pressure off the union, so what's happened to that money in the past eight months? What happened to that breathing space we gave them - that time to improve the Borders?

"I just don't believe that we're a third world nation in rugby now - that the Irish and Welsh can manage it and we can't."

Related topic

This article was posted on 19-Apr-2007, 07:04 by Hugh Barrow.