THE HERALD REPORTS TODAY

With domestic broadcasters finally beginning to give Scottish professional rugby the sort of platform it needs to engage the public, the opportunity must be seized upon.

For years many of us have been highly critical of the failure of BBC Scotland in particular, and STV, to pay more than lip service to any Scottish sport other than football.

The radio programme that has been airing on the Beeb on Friday evenings incorporating live commentary on Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors home matches, plus the introduction of a new magazine show on STV are welcome developments.

The rugby community has the national team to thank for maintaining a place among the world's elite, and for persuading the media that the sport deserves to be taken seriously. International matches apart - and only the best of those it must be said - rugby in Scotland receives disproportionately high coverage when compared with other so-called lesser sports.

Consider the Scottish Rocks, near neighbours of Glasgow Warriors. Some reading this will not even know the Rocks are a basketball team who play at the Braehead Arena. Yet attendances at their matches are around 1500, not far below the average gate at Firhill this season, albeit Warriors crowds have been growing steadily.

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh the professional rugby team play their matches directly over the fence from Murrayfield ice rink where Edinburgh Capitals again play their matches in front of around 1500.

The average turnout to see what has been Scotland's leading rugby team for most of the past few years has dropped to less than 1400.

The Rocks and the Capitals receive very little attention in any part of the press and their players are doubtless paid accordingly.

Our rugby players are, in contrast, full-time sportsmen in spite of the revenues their efforts attract.

Frank Hadden, Scotland's head coach, has said regularly that the professional game has taken off everywhere, except Scotland.

That has largely been down to a combination of politics and poor marketing, but the truth is that rugby has never been a particularly well-attended sport in this country.

In some ways, the broadcasters got it right by ignoring the sport, presuming their sole purpose is to reflect the level of interest that exists in those they cover. My argument with BBC Scotland has been that it also has a responsibility as a public service provider to support rugby.

That was not based on a personal attachment to the sport, but awareness that there were few groups of people who were more capable of making Scots feel good about themselves and their nationality than their rugby team.

The broadcasters' role became even more important in the professional era as sports teams depend on two things for their appeal - glamour and a sense of identity with communities.

Rugby's connection with its community had always been very different to that in professional sports, so when the top players stopped turning up in the clubhouse after matches when the sport went open a connection was lost.

That meant more of the players needed to achieve the sort of celebrity status enjoyed by the likes of Andy Irvine or the Hastings brothers in the amateur days. Instead, it went the other way.

A good deal of the blame for that lies with rugby itself and a jobsworth approach to public relations which saw models from other, much more successful professional sports, slavishly and unthinkingly adopted.

Claims that certain players were over-exposed in the media were laughable. The Scottish Rugby Union and its pro teams should have been begging people for publicity.

However, so far this season there have been very encouraging signs that the new management teams in place at Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors have learned from the mistakes of the past and are now working hard to attract as much media interest as possible.

Doubtless that is reflected in this improved response from the broadcasters and with Setanta showing matches live, Radio Scotland providing live commentaries and STV hopefully providing an opportunity for personalities to be exposed, rugby is very lucky to be given this chance to sell itself.

The level of public interest has to change if professional rugby is to become viable however.

If there really is strong feeling for the sport within Scotland, then those who believe that need to start getting behind the professional teams. There is no longer any excuse for not knowing who they are or when or where they are playing.

12:11am today



By KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer

This article was posted on 8-Nov-2007, 08:14 by Hugh Barrow.