THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS


Published Date: 23 April 2009
By David Ferguson
ANDY Robinson pitching his hat into the ring to be Scotland coach on Tuesday, hours after the announcement that only two Scots had been selected for the 2009 British and Irish Lions, could not have been more timely.
Now that he has applied for the post it is going to be very difficult for the Scottish Rugby Union not to appoint the English World Cup-winning coach. Irrespective of whether South Africa's Jake White or Australia's Rod Macqueen had applied – neither are believed to have done so – Robinson ticks too many boxes to be ignored. He has coaching skill, knowledge and experience of Test rugby and the professional game, understanding of Scottish rugby's strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the ambition and desire to restore a worldwide respect for Scottish rugby. And he has a point to prove personally too, after a difficult time as head coach of England. If not appointed, his progress at Edinburgh has not gone unnoticed so it may be only a matter of time before he leaves Edinburgh in any case. Based on the respect SRU chief executive Gordon McKie has for Robinson, and that garnered by the Englishman in the Scottish game over the past 18 months, we can expect Robinson to be the next Scotland coach.

However, one man cannot be seen as the panacea to all of Scottish rugby's ills. The SRU hierarchy have crucial decisions to take if the next national coach is to stand a chance of rebuilding the national team's reputation.

McKie has brought to the SRU the professional approach that was required to bring the budget under control. However, at times it has been necessary to limit the development of the game to keep costs down.

Crowds and player numbers are slowly rising and McKie's team have put Scottish rugby on a firmer footing, from an abject base. But now the chief executive has to find a way of growing the game again before Scotland loses touch with the rest of the rugby world.

Many in the sport are confident that Robinson has the talents to draw more from the current Scotland squad than did his predecessor Frank Hadden, but he will still be working largely with what Edinburgh and Glasgow produce and without improvement in that sphere there can be no expectation of a significant improvement at the top.

The money may come from the top down in Scottish rugby – close to 95 per cent of the income is generated by the national side – but the talent will always come from the bottom up and the grassroots requires attention.

Ireland are closest to Scotland's position in many ways – they have only 4,000 more adult players and owe much to private schools rugby – and the Six Nations Test highlighted that there is not much difference on the pitch either. Yet, they defeat Scotland now every year, where between 1984 and 1999 Ireland beat Scotland just twice. The reason for the turnaround is Ireland's successful development of a system for professional rugby.

It is built on the traditional four provinces, and began on meagre resources. Three of them have grown, gained success and flourished, while the fourth, Connacht, remains a vital feeder into pro rugby for the west of the country. All four have academies with professional coaching staff and invest around £11million in their professional teams.

The Irish RFU started with more money to play with than the SRU, having not spent it on a stadium, but they also had belief in their vision of the way forward. Past SRU regimes squabbled, and the current one scrapped the five-year high performance plan devised by Ian McGeechan, got rid of the director of rugby post itself, closed a third professional team and effectively merged four academies into one at Murrayfield. They now invest less than £5million in the pro teams' player budgets.

In those circumstances, why should we be surprised to have only two Scots in the Lions squad? Three years ago Australia hammered Scotland's under-18s 78-0; this year England showed the gulf with 61-0 and 75-0 wins. The latest crop of talented but under-developed Scottish under-18s lost by 60 points to Leicester's academy side. They have worked hard to compete with other sides, but it is amateurs v professionals at the top.

And from that point Ireland, Wales and Italy are moving ahead by hot-housing their talent in professional club academies while top Scots talent can be found scattered across clubs, age-group squads, sevens or falling somewhere in between. While English players play competitive games against other academies weekly, most of the best young Scots between 17 and 21 have to wait until spring each year for quality games.

The Scotland under-20s had some good results this year, but some fear this was a one-off, a good year in the cycle. And where do they go at 21?

And then we come to the raw material Robinson might soon be working with. Many of those who have stepped up to Scotland jerseys lack the mental strength and skill base to compete at pro level because they have made it to the top relatively easily.

There are many issues to be addressed. At the base level, the schools and youth game has to be brought together into a more vibrant, competitive structure, and the club game needs to be revamped, with a shorter more attractive season placing greater focus on producing local talent.

The area institutes and national academy are not properly co-ordinated with the pro teams and age-grade squads, and only real professional academies fully integrated to Edinburgh and Glasgow, with satellites in the Borders, Caledonia and England (at London Scottish), can plug into the pathways needed to carry players on to the professional and Test stages.

The SRU spends less on the player budgets of the pro teams now than two years ago, yet have greater TV and competition monies coming in and while the tighter fiscal prudence is to be applauded the SRU must address the lack of direction in what remains its core business – rugby.

Robinson may have the potential to improve players at the top, but he needs serious creativity below if Scottish rugby is to grasp professionalism and give more players the chance to compete with the rest of the world.

This article was posted on 23-Apr-2009, 07:22 by Hugh Barrow.