SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS

Power struggle
By Alisdair Reid
The Roseburn Bar sits almost literally in the shadow of Murrayfield Stadium, so it is reasonably safe to assume that the place has been privy to some madcap rugby schemes and scams down its long years of distinguished service to the dry-throated
Comment
THE ROSEBURN Bar sits almost literally in the shadow of Murrayfield Stadium, so it is reasonably safe to assume that the place has been privy to some madcap rugby schemes and scams down its long years of distinguished service to the dry-throated.

Yet if the hallowed howff is ever to be given the plaque it deserves, the award will most likely commemorate the improbable wheeze that first took shape within its walls on the evening of May 31, 2006.

For it was there and then that Bob and Alex Carruthers, on their way to watch Scotland's match against the Barbarians that night, fell into conversation with two Glasgow players who were heading in the same direction.

advertisementAs their SRU employers had just announced that one of Scotland's professional sides might have to be axed to save costs, the players explained that unemployment was looming unless private finance could be found. And so was planted the seed of the idea that would lead, just six weeks later, to the Carruthers taking control of the Edinburgh team.

SRU chief executive Gordon McKie may often have reflected on the hastiness of that marriage, but it would be pushing it to say he has enjoyed the luxury of repenting at leisure.

Almost exactly one year on from the day he announced the deal that was hailed as a lifeline for the sport, McKie's working life has come to be dominated by the sundry spats and cat-calling that have marked the part-privatisation of the capital club over 12 months of infighting over player access, finance and hospitality issues.

Last week, the tanks the Carruthers had parked on McKie's lawn opened up again when Edinburgh withdrew their dozen Scotland squad players from an international camp. You might describe the discussions that subsequently took place between the parties as successful crisis talks - but only in the sense that they succeeded in deepening the crisis.

That much was clear on Wednesday afternoon when Alex Carruthers and Graeme Stirling, executive chairman and managing director of Edinburgh, tendered their resignations and walked away from the club.

How did it come to this? The chronology of the Carruthers' stewardship of Edinburgh reads as a steeply descending graph that charts the degeneration of their relationship with their Murrayfield neighbours and landlords.

In SRU eyes, Bob Carruthers has been the villain of the piece, a capricious mischief-maker who has delighted in causing mayhem for the governing body.

But it takes two to tangle, and the Union's behaviour was hardly flattered by the parting words of Alex Carruthers, who said: "We're absolutely disgusted at the way we have been handled by the SRU."

The first cracks in the façade that all was well in EH12 began to be revealed in October with a dispute over profits from bar takings at Edinburgh home matches.

A matter that could and should have been resolved in a few minutes became a ridiculously drawn-out affair as both sides rushed to their trenches and conducted their business through megaphones.

At least things were going well on the playing front. Edinburgh had started the season well and, with the vastly experienced Lynn Howells installed as coach, were riding high in the Magners League.

Yet as the autumn Test window opened up and Scotland came calling for international players, the problem of having such a star-studded squad became obvious.

Fielding teams of second-stringers, results began to suffer and the grumbling began anew.

In December, after watching his side lose at home to Gloucester in the Heineken Cup, Bob Carruthers launched a vitriolic attack against the SRU.

Along the way, he revealed that Eamon Hegarty, the Union's finance director, was no longer occupying the seat on the Edinburgh board that was the governing body's entitlement, and claimed the club had not been given its rightful share of Heineken Cup and Magners League participation monies.

The Union issued a swift denial, but it was conspicuously light on detail. Clearly, the relationship was under considerable strain. It also represented a shift in Edinburgh tactics that Bob, the elder of the Carruthers brothers, was rapidly becoming the public face of the club's management team.

When the takeover had been announced the previous summer, the suggestion was that Alex, two years Bob's junior, would be running the show.

And, in a sense, he still was. Through the early months of the new year, the younger Carruthers and Stirling led Edinburgh's renegotiation of the financing arrangements for the club in detailed discussions with senior Union figures.

After weeks of talks it seemed a deal had been struck that both sides could sign up to. At the last minute, however, Edinburgh pulled out, and SRU sources believe that Bob was behind the retreat.

In the following weeks the feud deepened. When the SRU announced the closure of the Border Reivers, Bob reacted with fury, claiming that this was not the vision of Scottish professional rugby he had bought into.

At a protest meeting he called in Edinburgh's Caledonian Hotel, he was merciless in his condemnation of the Union and its senior officials. Controversially, he opened the meeting by playing an intemperate telephone message that had been left on the answering machine of an Edinburgh director by SRU chairman Allan Munro.

In this increasingly acrimonious environment the Union has often seemed uncertain of its tactics. Should they go toe-to-toe with Carruthers in a tit-for-tat fight, or should they attempt to maintain a dignified silence?

Swithering between the two, their responses have often seemed mealy-mouthed, an impression that has tended only to reinforce Carruthers' accusation of institutional inertia. Yet for all his mirth and sideswipes at the culture of gin and blazers, the pickle is as much his as the SRU's.

"Bob must have been half asleep when he signed that contract," one insider has said of the deal that was struck last year, a contract that has seemed about as watertight as a paper handkerchief at times.

Nor has it reflected particularly well on his time in charge at Edinburgh that there have been persistent rumours of dressing room dissent.

Earlier this year, the side suffered a mini-exodus of top talent as such established Test stars as Scott Murray, Rob Dewey and Simon Taylor decided to pursue their futures elsewhere. The Sunday Herald also understands that another leading international player may be on the verge of leaving the club.

All of which tends to add a faintly cynical dimension to the ruse of transferring the contracts of Edinburgh's Scotland squad players to a sports management company.

As explained elsewhere on this page, there are several reasons behind the move, but while some might dismiss the legal basis of the development, it will weigh heavily on the minds of players whose attentions ought to unwaveringly directed towards the forthcoming Rugby World Cup.

It is also worth remembering that Bob Carruthers' substantial personal wealth has been boosted by clever exploitation of copyright laws: much of his fortune has been made from his Classic Rock Productions series of videos which specialise in repackaging the work of some of the best-known rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s.

Yet the core of the issue remains one of who should be footing the bill at Edinburgh. The figure in dispute is believed to be in the region of £600,000, so it makes sense for both sides to keep a dog in the fight.

Both, moreover, argue that they have fulfilled their obligations to the letter and that there is no room for ambiguity in the interpretation of the contract. The Sunday Herald spoke at length with both parties last week; each blames the other for welching on the deal.

The most likely reason for the divergence is that Carruthers believes the Union made a commitment to hand over on a proportion of the relevant participation revenues, while McKie's reading of the situation is that the contract specifies a flat fee.

If the former is correct, the waters become muddier still, not least on account of Scotland now having only two professional teams.

With both parties entrenched in their positions, the prospect of legal action looms ever larger.

It is a fight Carruthers can afford to lose, one he might even laugh off. McKie does not have that luxury.

If Carruthers was seen to have been economical with the actualite, it would fit easily enough with the image of the mercurial rapscallion he seems happy to cultivate; the same charge against McKie would put the Union's top man out of his job.

The stakes are high. The personal enmity between the two men is now intense. In the fog of possibilities now swirling around Murrayfield, about the only certainty is that they won't be sorting things out over a beer in the Roseburn.

This article was posted on 8-Jul-2007, 21:54 by Hugh Barrow.