TODAY'S SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

Iain Morrison: It's a numbers game but some of McKie's sums don't add up



Published Date: 03 May 2009
By Iain Morrison
SRU CHIEF executive Gordon McKie held forth at a press conference last week when he stated that the SRU would not be considering a World Cup bid in 2015 or 2019. With the IRB demanding £80m and £100m guarantees respectively, in these straitened times no-one will get trampled in the rush to make the IRB's May 8 deadline.
Elsewhere, he confirmed that the SRU debt was going in the right direction, but despite that good news London Scottish would still have their academy funding withdrawn, an act that seems to be shooting, never mind looking, a gift horse in the mouth.

McKie claimed "their academy has no Scottish (age grade] boys in it". Except that the one-time Scotland U20 scrum-half Matt Heeks came through the Exiles' academy, as did flanker Ryan Wilson who is in the final trial for the U20s ahead of the World Championships in Japan with every chance of making the final cut. It's horribly early to pull the plug on the London Scottish academy with so little to fall back on up north.

The Murrayfield boss also talked about a so-called "super scout" who is to be appointed to recruit Scottish qualified players south of the border and Frank Hadden's name has already been linked to this task.

Certainly, England is a huge half-tapped market and the likes of Jim Hamilton, Simon Danielli and Hugo Southwell are just a few of the thousands of Scots who came through the English system. Iain Balshaw and Ryan Lamb are Scottish qualified players who were snapped up by Twickenham first. Whether one scout can cover a country the size of England is debatable but Frank would presumably put together a network of sympathetic informers who'd keep his ears open for anyone whistling Flower of Scotland.

The SRU boss also brushed aside criticism that his panel to choose the next Scotland coach might not be the most objective since it included Andy Nicol, who is on record as stating "there are not many people in rugby I respect more than Andy Robinson". It also failed to include a professional coach who might actually bring some expertise to the table.

But above all else, McKie asserted that the new coach would have a dual role because, in addition to whipping the best players into shape as national coach, the new man would be expected to act as a high-performance manager for all of Scotland's elite teams and, boy, do they need it. While McKie has been in situ, Scotland's elite rugby teams have made next to no progress which, in this fast-moving environment, is the equivalent of falling off a cliff compared to their nearest rivals.

Edinburgh have done well in the Magners League and Glasgow less so, but neither club lit up the Heineken Cup, with four wins out of 12 matches a poor return even if one of those victories came in Toulouse.

The age-grade teams have had mixed seasons, with the U20s doing well to record three wins from five outings but the U18s suffered two defeats at the hands of England for a combined score of 138-0. Wasn't it McKie who trumpeted "never again" when Scotland's juniors were bushwhacked 78-3 by Australia three years ago? The U17s won their three matches at Millfield, which is a great achievement, but they were playing against sides eight months their junior and usually the opposition's second-string squad at that. The Scotland sevens have been so bad that the England coach was on television questioning their entire strategy in a game that was invented by a Scot. Coach Steven Gemmell's team have yet to make the quarter-finals of the main competition in any IRB event this season and, without a point to their name, they wallow below Canada and the Cook Islands in the ranking table.

The new Scotland coach will have plenty on his plate taking a broom to the stables which is why, although McKie denies this point, someone with a working knowledge of the domestic game within Scotland will have a huge advantage over foreign candidates.

There are several benefits to being run by an accountant – the books are balanced for the first time in a while – but maximising Scotland's slender rugby resources is not among them. The new coach will have plenty to do and lifting the national side out of its current slump is only the start of it.

This article was posted on 3-May-2009, 07:30 by Hugh Barrow.