THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

Failure to produce talent sees SRU withdraw funds for its nursery at London Scottish





Published Date: 30 April 2009
By DAVID FERGUSON
LONDON Scottish is to be dropped as a nursery for the Scottish Rugby Union, due to an apparent failure to uncover new Scots talent over the past three years.
The SRU had agreed to help fund an academy at the Richmond club, in a step towards supporting the club's terrific rise back up through the English league system. London Scottish celebrated promotion to the new National League One last weekend and are now one step away from entering England's elite leagues, with a second division to be created modelled on the Guinness Premiership.

The SRU is still looking at the possibility of sending fringe professionals south to London Scottish next season, however Gordon McKie, the SRU chief executive, explained in a wide-ranging media briefing yesterday that in order to pursue a project to create a British and Irish Cup that could provide more playing opportunities for rising Scottish talent, the executive board had decided to withdraw its investment to the London Scottish academy.

He explained: "For the last three years we have invested in their academy – a modest sum – ostensibly to provide young age-grade players. For many reasons it had a slow start but, in reality, still has not produced many Scottish players we were not already aware of, and so we intend to withdraw our investment in the London Scottish Academy.

"We are in discussion with them as to other ways we could work together, be that through secondment or assignment of relevant players into their new league next year, and other assistance in lieu of straight financial assistance.

"We still have an exiles network, with two full-time performance development guys who are gathering English-based talent from Leeds to London and the Midlands into their pathway structures which feed players into the Scottish pathway structures up here, but the London Scottish Academy was very much a stand-alone academy, which, over the last three years, has not generated any Scottish-eligible players we didn't already know about.

"We still want to work with London Scottish, but feel we could use that money better. So, in parallel with that we have set aside around £100,000 for what's being called a British and Irish Cup. There are many details to be worked out yet, but it would be a back-up league comprising 24 teams from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and we're in discussion with Premier One clubs about how it could work.

"We would be willing to put three teams into a league of four pools of six teams, meaning five games to be played during the November Tests and Six Nations windows. We will clearly assist and subsidise Premier One clubs to step up to this higher level, but there is a lot more detail to be worked out as to what teams these might be."

There is little doubt that the SRU needs to find some way of creating more opportunity for talented rugby players to make the step-up to the professional stage. Recent Scotland coaches have had to select from a very narrow base in comparison with other nations and the scrapping of the Border Reivers to leave just Glasgow and Edinburgh has merely thrown more Scottish talents either out of pro rugby or into virtual full-time training schedules.

The SRU met with Division One clubs on Tuesday night and McKie said this league, being termed an 'A' league in Ireland – who view it as ideal for their pro sides' reserve teams – could happen as early as next season.

However, there remains resistance to the concept in England and Wales, and even in Scotland the idea throws up many questions that suggest it may take longer to put together, notably whether two clubs qualify for this cup, and how that might affect the league championship, or whether the teams are composite sides of the best club players.

The SRU would put together one team of fringe professionals and academy players, but they would also be available to the two club sides, and McKie accepted that creating a protocol would be tricky. He revealed that he had stood down from the Six Nations Committee and joined the Celtic League Board that manages the Magners competition in order to help progress this initiative.

This article was posted on 30-Apr-2009, 07:15 by Hugh Barrow.