BILL LOTHIAN WRITES IN EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS


Preston Lodge break tradition by putting woman in charge




By BILL LOTHIAN
THEY'VE tried a few approaches to get Scottish rugby really firing in the professional era but perhaps, just perhaps, the answer has at last been found at Preston Lodge � they've given the casting vote in club matters to a woman.

What sort of a job have the game's menfolk done over the past 12 years anyway?

Squabble has tended to follow independent review to be followed by more in-fighting leading some to question whether potential has fully being realised, even yet?

Now along comes Shona Brash ready to try something different in the form of driving a prominent club upwards with a style she claims will be based on "common-sense and business techniques."

And, oh yes, there will be a little help from England's World Cup winning coach Sir Clive Woodward, or at least his ideas for rugby success as contained in a successful autobiography entitled "Winning!" which has clearly taken a trick with Mrs Brash.

On a few occasions throughout our interview she extols the rugby virtues of Sir Clive while claiming to be immune to the politics that have undermined the professional game.

"I don't know anything about the politics of rugby and they've passed me by," she says and to underline the point produces a shrug of the shoulders when asked if Woodward made a mistake appointing former Downing Street spin-doctor Alastair Campbell to the backroom team for the last Lions tour he fronted, disastrously.

Such a revelation that Shona is much too busy committing to a club she joined when her son, Jonathan, now 21, entered the mini-section more than a decade ago to bother about what has gone before might just be a trump card, and in setting out her stall she makes it clear she won't be hidebound by so called conventional thinking.

"Women see things differently, I really believe that.

"Men sometimes don't pay enough attention to the really small things but put them all together and you really get your reward. Greatness is measured by attention to detail.

"To me that is just common-sense and whatever PL want me to do I'll attempt. If that means forming a woman's team which requires me to turn out and play I'll try it.

"More likely they'll need somebody to clean the toilets occasionally and why shouldn't the president muck in?"

With the PL season due to get underway on Saturday week at Pennypit Park with the annual ten-a-side tournament where the draw includes former national champs Glasgow Hawks and a charity select run by former player Jim "The Pig" Michie and known as the "Pigbarians" Shona is already well up and running.

"We've had as many as 50 players down training and one of my jobs is to take along four small cookers and ensure there's a meal available afterwards.

"Soon I'll have to get the production of our match programmes underway and come match days there'll be energy-replacing foods in the dressing room for afterwards by the time I've had a half-time cup of tea with the visiting committee.

"First, though, we're producing a booklet setting out standards while our players want help to heal any bruises with wheely bins filled with ice, which has been arranged."

If Shona sounds organised it is a trait she attributes to being thrown in at the deep end running the family garage and petrol station business in Port Seton when her dad died a few years ago.

"One thing Clive Woodward preaches is the need to bring a businesslike approach to the game. That's an area where I feel particularly qualified to assist and when people say I'm entering a man's world I have a ready reply: "I've been responsible for MOT testing at our garage for years and you don't get much more of a male preserve than that," says the woman who balances rugby alongside work, a family life, and still finds time to look after her horse and two pet dogs besides running the occasional 10k race and undertaking ornamental glass design courses.

This article was originally posted on 22-Jul-2008, 11:31 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 22-Jul-2008, 11:31.