Scotland on Sunday reports
TOM ENGLISH
BOB CARRUTHERS, the owner of Edinburgh Rugby, yesterday announced his intention to make severe cuts to his playing staff, encouraging his elite international players to leave what he called "the mire" and seek new deals elsewhere.

The move is part of a plan to cut the 52-man squad of players back to a rump of around 30. The news casts considerable doubt on the arrival of Stephen Larkham, the stand-off who won his 100th cap for the Wallabies yesterday and is due to join the club after the World Cup.

Carruthers, who has been engaged in yet another bad-tempered spat with SRU chief executive Gordon McKie this week, telephoned the agents representing the club's large contingent of international players last night and told them to find new clubs for their players with immediate effect.

Carruthers last night told Scotland on Sunday that "with great regret I have to say that redundancies are inevitable".

He told the internationalists' agents that: "If your man has got somewhere else to go, then tell him to take it. If he has the talent and the opportunity then I'm not going to hold him back. I wouldn't want players stuck in the mire in Edinburgh if they have another avenue open to them.

"I can't keep writing cheques on the blind. Given what the SRU are saying, our biggest fight now is for survival. We have got to cut our cloth according to our means, we have to stay in business. That is the alpha and the omega now. We can't all be Barcelona. If we're Stirling Albion then that's great. I'm sure the lads running Stirling Albion get a huge amount out of it. It'll be exciting getting young players in and helping them develop into internationals."

However, most of the internationals - a group that includes players such as Chris Paterson, Ally Hogg, Mike Blair, Hugo Southwell, Marcus Di Rollo, Simon Webster, Craig Smith, Allan Jacobsen, David Callam, Phil Godman and Dougie Hall - still have at least a season left on their contracts. Several have recently signed long-term contracts with the club. Whether their services can simply be dispensed with is open to question.

It is yet to become clear whether this is simply the latest round in a bruising battle between Carruthers and McKie, or whether the Edinburgh owner is in earnest. Either way, with the World Cup less than two months away, the threat of redundancy is unlikely to help Edinburgh's band of internationals focus their minds on the job in hand.

This article was posted on 8-Jul-2007, 07:29 by Hugh Barrow.