Bad attitude is a blight on Scotland’s professional teamsKEVIN FERRIE October 16 2008
Chatting last Saturday evening with a colleague who has little interest in football, I observed that there must be something a bit strange about Kris Boyd. Why, I wondered aloud, is a player with his strike rate repeatedly left out of teams by his managers?

Around 12 hours later, listening to the radio, the answer seemed clear. It was very hard to hear of the Rangers striker's retirement from international football without three words coming to mind: arrogance, petulance and selfishness.

Arrogance because no player should ever regard himself an automatic choice for his national side. By contrast, another colleague who used to ghost write the newspaper column of Richard Hill told me the other day he constantly had to explain to the peerless England and Lions flanker that he was not going to put the words "if I'm selected" into his copy. Hill felt he should be seen to take nothing for granted.

advertisementPetulance, because that was the only way to interpret the timing, much as Boyd apologists hit the airwaves the next day trying to claim his decision had been the considered outcome of a long-drawn out thought process.

Selfishness because whatever an individual's personal sensitivities are, unless he has been the victim of an unforgivable personal attack or insult then withdrawing his labour from the national cause is to put his feelings above the needs of his country.

Maybe I've got Boyd all wrong and he has a really good reason for what he has decided to do in this instance. If so, it might be an idea to hire someone who can make his case in more articulate fashion than has been done so far, but that is up to him. All that the majority of us who are not privy to more information than is in the public domain can do is surmise.

However, his attitude seems symptomatic of a problem that has been prevalent among Scottish sportsmen who are paid more than those charged with giving them direction.

It was, in that context, disappointing to hear last weekend that there is murmuring among some Glasgow Warriors players about how they are being managed. If that is accurate - and the source was reputable - then it really is time that those responsible had a good look at themselves.

Compared with the support systems in England, the Scottish professional teams work on a shoestring, with key personnel often having to pick up a great deal of slack because there is no-one else there to do it. Yet the coaches at those clubs, whose job is to identify talent then give them effective structures within which to work, fielded teams that won consistently at the end of last season.

More pertinently, the Warriors produced, two weeks ago, arguably their finest ever Magners League performance when coming back from an early deficit to take the Scarlets apart at Firhill. It was dazzling rugby.

Afterwards Sean Lineen, their head coach, spoke enthusiastically about how they had stuck to the gameplan, just as he had when, in very different conditions, they battled to victory in the season's opener against Newport Gwent Dragons.

Yet those were their only league wins in five outings this season, before they opened the Heineken Cup as they had their league campaign, by visiting the Dragons. This time, having led by 10 points early on, they ended up losing by that margin.

There are two things that any player who feels that there is a problem with the coaching at the Warriors should consider. The first is that they have demonstrated that the plans and structures their coaches come up with will work when they perform as they should. The second is that, in having done so, they have shown they have enough talent within their ranks to get much better results than they are achieving.

While every coach's dream is to see his side perform consistently, the drive to do so must come from the players. They are the ones who win the ball or otherwise then make the breaks and the tackles.

If they can do it once they can do it every time . . . if they want to enough. Yet far too many Scottish sportsmen seem to think that occasionally showing what they are capable of is enough to entitle them to earn a living.

It was the same watching Edinburgh's second quarter capitulation to Leinster last Saturday. Nothing coaches do can allow for the blunders that allowed the Irish side to take control of that match.

As Andy Robinson, the Edinburgh coach, left the press room, he was muttering in exasperation: "What a waste . . ."

He was referring to the opportunity his side had just missed out on. However, too often it is waste of talent, due to lack of application and desire, that blights Scottish professional teams.

This article was posted on 16-Oct-2008, 07:42 by Hugh Barrow.