THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

Di Rollo the next to go as he opts for Toulouse gamble
GARETH BLACK
SCOTLAND centre Marcus Di Rollo is about to deepen the player crisis at Edinburgh by becoming the fifth current international to desert the club after the World Cup. He is expected to sign for Toulouse next week, the second high profile departure after Chris Paterson continued the trend by announcing on Tuesday that he was heading for Gloucester, who are to play him at stand-off.

Di Rollo's decision to follow the example of the man who captained club and country last season, deepens the sense of changing-room unrest which follows the fall-out from the recent spat between the Scottish Rugby Union and Edinburgh. That led to the club pulling their players out of the final week of conditioning training with the Frank Hadden's World Cup squad.

The Edinburgh owner Bob Carruthers claims that he has no intention of allowing any more players to leave, but if the unrest continues he could have little say in the matter - as one agent not involved in this case put it: "Once people start rushing for the exit door, nobody wants to be the one left behind wondering where everyone went."

The only strange thing about Di Rollo's move is his choice of club, deciding to head for the south of France where the competition from the likes of Yannick Jauzion and Florian Fritz head a star-studded line-up that could mean his opportunities to prove himself against the biggest clubs and highest level of competition are somewhat limited.

Conversely, since Hadden, the Scotland coach, insists that Di Rollo is the best handling and most creative centre available to the national side, he may find that playing outside the likes of Frederic Michalak restores his confidence and gives him the space to show his critics what he can do.

Whichever way you read it, it is a gamble. His departure again cuts the Edinburgh involvement in the World Cup.

Only nine of the present training party have long-term commitments to the club and their representation at the tournament in France is unlikely to exceed seven.

Scotland caps Simon Taylor, Rob Dewey and Alasdair Strokosch have already left after their contracts ended last month - partly balanced by the signing of Stephen Larkham, the Australia fly-half, which Carruthers insists is not in danger - and now Scott Murray, Paterson and Di Rollo have all played their last games for the club.




Murray not sacked but has played last game for Edinburgh
GARETH BLACK
SCOTT Murray, the Edinburgh lock, has played his last game for the club but reports that he had been sacked are wide of the mark.

Discussions about his immediate future are still under way and no decision has yet been taken as to when he will be released from his existing contract.

Murray has signed to play for Montauban in France, but fell foul of his old bosses in Edinburgh when he announced his move without giving the Scottish independently-owned club a chance to bid for his services beyond the end of his existing contract, which should run through to the end of the year.

The real position is that Murray wants out of his contract before its official end so that he can join his new club in late October or early November - after the World Cup - but talks have been stalled by internal disciplinary action which has been rumbling on for the last couple of months.

The club feels aggrieved that he had settled his future as early as March and without giving them a chance to make a counter-offer. They would have liked the chance to at least talk to him about the possibility of a new deal, but, with the Montauban contract being signed nine months before the end of the previous one, never got the opportunity.

The process has been complicated by all the changes in personnel at Edinburgh. Alex Carruthers, the former executive chairman, and Graeme Stirling, the former managing director, were both involved in the procedures, which then stalled when they left the club following the outbreak of its latest hostilities with the Scottish Rugby Union.

Dean Lewis, who took over from Stirling, will be dealing with the case but is likely to take a little while to get to grips with the details, particularly with everything else that has been going on at Edinburgh in last few weeks. The reality is that there is no argument about the fact that Murray is going, it is more about the timing and terms of his departure.

The Edinburgh club are liable for his wages through to the end of the World Cup, but could save themselves tens of thousands of pounds if he were to leave their employment before then.

Both sides were refusing to talk about the complications yesterday. David Williams, Murray's agent, would only say that it was an internal matter for Edinburgh Rugby and, while he was expecting further talks, he could not say when they might happen, although he did confirm the player had not been sacked.

Bob Carruthers, the Edinburgh owner, was equally circumspect, refusing to talk about the details of the case except to confirm there is a contract dispute which has yet to be resolved.

Murray himself was training with Scotland and not available.

Murray has been one of Edinburgh's top earners since returning from England in 2002, where he was playing for Saracens, at the start of the high-profile, concerted drive to get as many leading Scottish players as possible playing in Scotland where the international management would be in a position to control their training and how often they played.

Since then, Murray has been one of the most consistent performers for Edinburgh and his decision to sign for Montauban seemed to have given the 30-year-old a new lease of life, finishing the season with a flourish despite playing in a side that was, by then, struggling to find its form.

The whole dispute has been complicated by Edinburgh's quarrel with the Scottish Rugby Union, part of which saw the club order its international players to train with the club for a week when the union wanted them to train with the national squad.

The club was taken to a disciplinary tribunal for breaking the International Rugby Board regulations on player release but only censured.




Executive bid to heal rugby civil war ends in acrimony
GARETH BLACK
AN ATTEMPT by the Scottish Executive to heal the rift between the Scottish Rugby Union and Edinburgh ended in acrimonious failure yesterday.

Following the intervention of Stewart Maxwell, the new sports minister, the two warring factions met at Murrayfield but parted with Edinburgh's leading shareholder Bob Carruthers claiming the SRU had threatened to withdraw completely its funding to the capital club.

Concerned that the unseemly squabbling was having a detrimental effect on the sport, the SNP minister wrote to both parties. The result was a meeting between Carruthers and Gordon McKie, the SRU's chief executive who had previously rejected the offer of mediation. Both men were accompanied by lawyers but Maxwell was not present.

But instead of finding a solution to the funding squabble, the meeting exacerbated the situation. If Carruthers' claim is correct and the SRU is threatening to withdraw almost £2million a year of funding, then the businessman is left with the stark choice of funding the team entirely from his own pocket or walking away from the club.

Carruthers sounded both depressed and bewildered afterwards, since he had gone into the meeting with a peace proposal that he believed had a serious chance of success. His proposal was to wind the clock back to March and reinstate a deal that was on the table at that time. Though there was a lot in it with which he was unhappy, he was prepared to sign the agreement to end this divisive dispute.

But the SRU has changed tack in recent days. Up until last week, its big quarrel with Carruthers was over his threat to take the union to court over bills that he says remain unpaid many months after they were due.

However, now the union is feeling far more concerned about the state of the Edinburgh team, a position that has been exacerbated by the recent defection of Chris Paterson to Gloucester, the impending departure of Marcus Di Rollo to Toulouse and the disciplinary action being taken by the club against Scott Murray. Edinburgh representation in the World Cup squad is likely to be down to seven, and if more players leave then they feel the club will no longer be fulfilling its role.

The union board and council are adamant that a few months after voluntarily cutting their professional representation down to two teams, they cannot have it effectively cut to one because of the quarrel with Edinburgh.

This baffles Carruthers who feels that if the union had treated him fairly, then the dispute would never have arisen and there would have been no question of having to allow players to go. Instead the dispute has created a position where he could find himself having to fund the entire price of running the club - and there is no professional club in the world that runs without grants from its home union and at anything other than a substantial loss - which would almost certainly mean having to cut costs even further.

As far as he is concerned, he is the only person outside the debt-ridden union prepared to help it to fund professional rugby and it does not seem to want him involved.

The SRU refused to comment last night but is expected to be spell out its position today.

For his part, Carruthers has never sounded more depressed or less combative during this dispute.

"This is really the death knell for serious independent professional rugby in Scotland," he said. "It is a weird one. It will be odd having the union at war with its only independent club who are the employers of these players. I think what they are saying is that they want the club back but if they are not going to fund it, we do not have any obligations to them."

This article was posted on 27-Jul-2007, 07:43 by Hugh Barrow.