THE HERALD REPORTS TODAY


Values behind landmark celebrations must not be forgottenKEVIN FERRIE April 10 2008
This week's celebrations of two landmarks in Scottish rugby history serve as a marvellous reminder of the real values of club sport. Last night, organisers were claiming an advance sell-out at Raeburn Place for perhaps the first time since the days of Test rugby there more than a century ago, as Edinburgh Accies marked the season that has brought up the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Scotland's oldest club by taking on the Barbarians.

On Saturday there will - as is now annually the case - be the biggest crowd of the season for a club event in Scotland as the Mathon Melrose Sevens marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of that version of the sport.

In both cases, the clubs in question are trading on their unique selling points, what they see as making them special. Those who care for Edinburgh Accies and Melrose will rightly feel very proud of their traditions and the way the current membership is maintaining them. It is also a fact of life that some clubs have slightly better claims to wider fame than others. Yet these two are not that different from the rest.

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Scotland's first rugby clubs were formed midway through the 19th century because groups of people who loved playing the game wanted to compete with one another and to promote their sport's development within their communities. Yet no club is deserving of anything unless that continues to be the case and there have been times in recent years that it has felt like people have lost sight of that.

It is an expression I have too often used myself, but everyone should shudder when they hear or read references to "leading clubs" as if there is some elite section within the sport that is entitled to different treatment. In Murrayfield's debating halls there have, too, been references to "the tail wagging the dog", which again imply that the views of clubs lower down the leagues should somehow be accorded less importance than those of clubs in the upper echelons.

Of all the side-benefits of introducing a professional tier within Scottish rugby, one of the best is that it has forced a reappraisal of such attitudes. There was something quite wrong about the way some in the top division traded on their status and simply picked off talent developed elsewhere.

With the bulk of the best young players now identified as future professionals at a relatively early age, all clubs are now increasingly dependent on developing their own talent to protect their future. More importantly, there seems to be growing awareness within the Scottish Rugby Union that the organisation's role is not to reinforce existing status but to encourage those doing most in terms of that development work.

Admittedly, it has been strange that repeated requests from The Herald to the SRU's community rugby division for a breakdown of what money each club receives have not met with a response. It seems obvious that the correct way to allocate that is on the basis of numbers involved in junior programmes within clubs. It is also hard to imagine that there would be a legitimate reason for not then making that public, since surely all clubs are entitled to know what those figures are, since it would arguably form club rugby's most important league table. Even so, there genuinely seems to have been a change of attitude in that regard.

Surely the SRU's two priorities should be to maximise the numbers playing rugby at grassroots level and to ensure that the sport maintains its profile at elite level, thereby retaining its glamour and remaining as attractive as possible to youngsters.

As for which clubs do best from that in terms of support received from the governing body, it should not matter whether they are in Premiership One or in West League Three.

No club is entitled to believe itself more special than any other. The only people who really care about whether a club thrives or even survives are its members. If too few care enough to do the work within their community to sustain that club, whether identifying talent or fund-raising for facilities, then it has no divine right to exist and certainly not to have some inflated idea of its status. Those clubs that do their bit to promote rugby are entitled to a proportionate share of what support the governing body can offer. Those failing to must decide at what level they want to operate and cut their cloth accordingly.

In that regard, Ned Haig, the man of Melrose credited with inventing sevens, was an inspirational figure because he did so in recognition of a funding crisis at his club at that time. That 125 years on the anniversary of his brainwave will be marked in considerable style on Saturday does enormous credit to him and his club.

This article was posted on 10-Apr-2008, 07:34 by Hugh Barrow.