THE HERALD REPORTS

KEVIN FERRIE, Chief Rugby Writer June 28 2008
Scotland's clubs last night rejected a bid by Murrayfield administrators to kill off next season's Scottish Cup following a vigorous debate at the national stadium.

Proposed by Allan Munro, the SRU chairman and seconded by George Jack, its president, their argument had been that a suspension of the competition was required to allow time to overhaul the congested playing season.

However, in the course of an at times greatly confusing debate, it became clear that the problem had been the way officials had drawn up alternative plans for the season, blocking off international weekends as unavailable for club competition. It emerged that the vast majority were in favour of greater flexibility to arrange league and cup fixtures on those weekends while avoiding direct clashes with international kick-off times.


Clubs also retained the right to make any final decision on changes to the season through a vote at the agm after agreeing an amendment to the board and council-generated proposal that the council take over responsibility for deciding the season structure.

Ray Mountford of Stirling County seemed to sum up the mood of the meeting when saying he felt the matter had created a "storm in a tea cup."

Ronnie Smith of Dalziel went further by saying that while he was a great admirer of the work done by Gordon McKie, the SRU's chief executive, and Munro, this issue was "reverting to the bad old days" when the SRU was regularly guilty of failing to consult its clubs properly.

On which note, it was slightly disturbing in democratic terms that, with only two candidates standing, Jack, the incumbent, was allowed to give a president's report to the meeting immediately before the vote, while his rival Jim Stevenson from Cambuslang was given no such opportunity to address the meeting. In spite of that Stevenson was returned as the new president of the SRU by a margin of 95 to 86.

Years of tradition were cast aside however, when a motion to end the practice of staging the agm on a Friday evening was agreed by a narrow majority.

The night was marked with bungling by SRU officials.

Early in the evening Eamon Hegarty, its finance director, seemed embarrassed when unable to answer what he deemed a difficult question regarding increased staffing costs and turned on his interrogator claiming it had been unfair that he had not received prior notice of it.

However, Graham Ireland, the company secretary, got into an even bigger fankle when he repeatedly and wrongly tried to tell clubs what they were voting for regarding the plan to get rid of the cup.

His excuse was that his confusion had been to it having been a long evening, at least part of which was accurate.

This article was posted on 28-Jun-2008, 14:28 by Hugh Barrow.