Union cash clouds real issue in pro team spat
It might strike the casual observer as strange to use the past week's kerfuffle in Scottish rugby as an illustration of why the SRU needs to sever its connections with the country's professional teams and let then thrive or perish in the free market.

Bob Carruthers, after all, is nobody's idea of Roman Abramovich or even Vladimir Romanov and his tiresome antics, while whipping up a contretemps that was wholly avoidable, have simply ensured that the sport's many detractors can fling further ordure in its direction.

None the less, Carruthers has performed, perhaps unwittingly, one service: he has demonstrated that for any professional club to be masters of their own destiny, they have to autonomous and mot reliant on handouts from their governing body.

I was flabbergasted when the wrongly maligned SRU chief executive, Gordon McKie, explained that his organisation was still investing heavily in Edinburgh, to the extent of £1.5m or £2m in the past year alone. Because, if one harks back to the blaze of publicity which greeted the Carruthers' purchase of Edinburgh, there was much talk of it being Scotland's first rugby franchise when it is nothing of the sort. Hence the necessity of the Murrayfield panjandrums informing him as soon as possible: "Son, you're on your own now."

The bold Bob, let's not forget, has spent this week letting fly at the SRU and what he perceives to be a lack of vision. Fair enough, he has had his say. But talk is cheap. Henceforth, some of us will be studying the scale of his investment and fathoming whether he actually possesses the financial muscle to improve Edinburgh.

Whatever the outcome, Carruthers and his colleagues should be left to fund the club, build up the fanbase and generate publicity. If they fail - and the evidence thus far is hardly promising - it will be their fault and nobody else's. There should be no recourse to blaming the SRU or employing the notion that fans didn't turn up because they refused to put money into Murrayfield's pockets.

This dismal excuse was trotted out by the pro-Borders brigade, as if McKie, Allan Munro & Co were responsible for slaughtering a wildly successful Reivers side.

When I travelled down to Netherdale for one of their last Magners League fixtures, I was told repeatedly: "A lot of folk would love to come to the matches, but they canna' stand the SRU." In that case, let's create an environment where these clubs stand or fall on their own endeavours.

There are risks attached, but it has always been one of the anomalies of the SRU that a collection of people who are unashamedly capitalist in their working lives should suddenly be transformed into unreconstructed communists when the subject switches to rugby. Fuelled by the socialist ideology of Jim Telfer, the old union committee that crazily established a structure whereby 120 players were paid salaries in 1995, remains a glaring example of how to orchestrate a Caledonian version of the Wall Street crash. Yet there are still defenders of that system which never had an earthly.

By contrast, in England, a string of multi-millionaires have invested in Premiership sides and the consequences have been the emergence of one of the most captivating championships in the world. Ireland, too, allowed their leading luminaries to depart at the start of the pay-for-play era, but gradually, inexorably, managed to woo the majority of them back. Ronan O'Gara, Brian O'Driscoll and Peter Stringer have all become household names at the same time as attendances have swelled along with youth participation numbers.

Perhaps this wouldn't be replicated in Scotland, where most enthusiasts still saunter to Meggetland or Myreside, Anniesland or Almond Park every week and dismiss the professional circuit as "not for them". But it is difficult to believe that if Brian Kennedy can revive Sale and transform them into one of the most vibrant clubs in the whole of British rugby, that a similar process couldn't be brought to fruition here at Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The benefits would be enormous. Those clubs could erect their own stadiums, tap into communities, preach both to the faithful and the unconverted, sign up to social inclusion programmes and seek council assistance.

Yes, they would have to work within a realistic budget, but Scotland has plenty of sports-mad plutocrats, many with a passion for oval-ball conflict. So why shouldn't it be an auspicious move?

An increasing number of Scots are pro-independence. That shouldn't merely apply to political affairs.

12:01am today



By NEIL DRYSDALE

This article was posted on 14-Jul-2007, 07:19 by Hugh Barrow.