THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

Senseless re-shuffle shows SRU to be reactive and short-sighted

By ALLAN MASSIE
THE announcement from Murrayfield this week about Scotland's coaches is worrying. It is more than worrying, it is downright depressing.
It's quite right that Frank Hadden should be retained, but there seems no good reason for Alan Tait and George Graham to have been dismissed. Tait was the defence coach, and defence wasn't the problem in the Six Nations; Graham the forwards coach andADVERTISEMENTthe set-pieces at least went as well as could be expected. It look as if both have been made sacrificial victims, and for no good reason.

More worrying and depressing still is the elevation of Andy Robinson and Sean Lineen. This has nothing to do with their ability. They are both good coaches. The cause for anxiety is quite different. Robinson is Edinburgh's head coach, Lineen's Glasgow's, and these jobs are important. The future of Scottish rugby depends at least as much on the performance of our two pro teams as on the record of the national XV.

Indeed we are unlikely to have a consistently successful Scotland team until Edinburgh and Glasgow achieve much greater success in the Magners League and Heineken Cup. Both teams have made progress this year. Robinson in particular has done much better with Edinburgh than it seemed likely anyone could do after the disruptive events of last summer. Now it seems as if both are to be diverted to some extent at least.

It's as if giving Edinburgh and Glasgow the best opportunity to succeed doesn't really matter, as if they are regarded as having no other function than to serve as feeder clubs for the national side. This is short-sighted and remarkably stupid. One has only to consider how Munster's regular success in Europe has given a boost to Irish rugby to see how stupid such an attitude is. If either Edinburgh or Glasgow could match Munster, the benefit to the game here would be enormous. But they are unlikely to be able to do so if they are treated as mere subsidiaries.

Ian McGeechan argued when director of rugby that the sport and business sides of the SRU should be kept completely separate, or as far separate as possible. Certainly decisions about who should coach the national and professional teams should be made by the director of rugby, and not by the chief executive. But we have had no director of rugby since 2003, and this latest decision demonstrates just how much we need one.

It is inconceivable that a director of rugby would conclude that the best way to strengthen the national side was to put the development of the pro teams at risk by depriving them of their senior coaches' full attention. But that is the decision that has been made.

Making such decisions shouldn't be the work of the chief executive. Indeed his only connection with the rugby side of the SRU should be setting the budget and seeing that it is adhered to. Anything else should be regarded as being beyond his competence. But since we don't have a director of rugby, it inevitably becomes his business whether he is qualified by his knowledge of the game to make such decisions or not. It is extraordinary that the executive board doesn't appear to understand this.

It is one thing to set targets, as Gordon McKie did in the autumn, but I doubt if it is a very useful thing to have done. In any case setting these targets – 40 per cent success in the Six Nations etc – is simply back of an envelope stuff, an excuse for the absence of any coherent plan to take the game in Scotland to a higher level.

Such a plan would have as a first step the establishment of the pro teams' autonomy in everything other than budgetary terms. But that autonomy can't exist while their coaches are seen primarily as SRU employees to be directed to other tasks away from the clubs for which they are responsible.It would be better of course if the pro teams could stand entirely free and were no longer owned by the SRU, but, even while they are so owned, it should be seen as necessary that they are as free as possible from central control, and their interests respected.

Meanwhile, there is no sign of any plan to bridge the gulf between the amateur and the professional game. Not only is there no evidence of such a plan, there is no indication that Murrayfield understands that this is desirable, even necessary. This reinforces one's impression that all decision-making at Murrayfield now is simply reactive, responding to situations rather than seeking to frame them. So we stumble along, living as it were from hand to mouth. It's not good enough.

The plain inescapable fact is that we are falling every year further and further behind other countries. This has nothing to do with Frank Hadden's ability as a coach, which is considerable. It's highly unlikely that a change of chief coach would make any enduring difference.

We are at best standing still while the game elsewhere goes ahead, and we are doing so because none of the problems that have been evident since the advent of professionalism have been addressed.

"Without vision, the people perish", and since there is no vision , we are in danger of doing just that.

It is essential that before September the executive board should appoint a director of rugby, and one who has a clear idea of what must be done to take the game forward here in Scotland. Otherwise our comparative decline will continue and may become precipitous.

This article was posted on 26-Apr-2008, 07:37 by Hugh Barrow.