SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY REPORTS
Leagues apart


Published Date: 23 August 2009
By Iain Morrison

THE SCOTTISH Hydro Electric league season gets underway next Saturday afternoon when, among other fixtures on the card, Ayr take on Heriot's at Millbrae, a match that pitches the champions against the cup holders. The coming club season will be unique in two respects. For the first time since the official leagues were formed way back in 1973, Hawick will be missing from the top flight and many at Mansfield expect the men in green to bounce straight back.

The other novelty is the inaugural British and Irish Cup which sees Ayr and Heriot's pitched in at the deep end against the semi-professional Welsh clubs and the full-time players from England's Championship and Ireland's pro-team back-up squads. The first matches are just around the corner. On 21 November, Heriot's will host a Nottingham side with former Goldenacre favourite Iain Nimmo in their ranks, which should be a walk in the park compared to later matches against Munster and Bristol. On the same day Ayr must travel to Doncaster Knights who boast three Scots in fly-half Ali Warnock and front rowers Stuart Corsar and Steven Lawrie.

There are dangers inherent in mixing amateurs with full-time professionals and the two Scottish clubs, to be joined by a backup/academy "Thistles" team, are staring at a learning curve that requires crampons, pick axe, ropes and goodness knows how much time to negotiate. However, the new cup may at least bring one benefit to Scottish rugby, albeit an unwitting one, if it forces the Premier One clubs to sit down and work out what on earth they are on earth for. Should Ayr and Heriot's suffer calamitous losses in the cross-border competition against seasoned professionals it would at least force the issue.

What exactly is the point of Premier One? It's a question worth asking because the top league is being pulled in two conflicting ways and it may need to choose or risk a split. Some see Scotland's top clubs as being at the pinnacle of the "community game". More ambitious minds, including almost everyone involved in the league, argue that the top clubs are clearly part of "performance rugby" and, as such, act as a useful stepping stone to the professional ranks. Gregor Townsend was talking only last week about "late developers" and Scotland still boasts plenty professional players that have graduated from the club game rather than the academies.

"Ask anyone in Premier One and they will tell you that they see themselves as part of the performance game," says Dundee HSFP director of rugby Ian Rankin. "The progress made over the last five years has been amazing. The professional game is moving fast but the aspiring players in the club game are chasing hard."

Will that be enough without the sort of focus and drive that a rival coach insists Premier One is lacking?

"Premier One doesn't know what it wants to be," argues West of Scotland coach John Beattie. "The club game doesn't sell itself, it doesn't always integrate itself into the local community and it doesn't market itself.

"I am all for it being as professional as it wants to be but I feel strongly that it should be a place where Scottish talent is nurtured. By all means pay them money if you have it but I just don't see the point of importing lots of foreign players.

"I think that a standalone Premier One would be a good thing in many respects because the clubs are already doing a whole lot of stuff on their own because Murrayfield is busy promoting the pro-teams and that is as it should be. I think a standalone Premier One looking after their own interests would not be a bad thing."

This standalone, SPL-style Premier One would give the clubs autonomy to enter their own sponsorship deals, market themselves properly and, as an additional selling point, it would also stop them moaning about the lack of SRU support. While relations between the governing body and the top clubs are probably better than they have been for years, this is a recurring theme within Premier One and not just from the so called "troublemakers".

"The professional game needs to trust us a little more," says Heriot's coach Bob McKillop, adopting a diplomatic line. "Take last season's cup final as an example. I had Chris Fusaro and Struan Dewer come up to me afterwards and say that that match was played at a greater intensity than anything they had experienced in the U20 Six Nations campaign. There is a lack of trust even from the professional players who don't see Premier One as a place they can go and get some game time and try and fight their way back into the pro-team.

"I think this new cup is going to be very interesting. I feel that Ayr and Heriot's will have to give a good account of themselves or we face the possibility of not being invited back. It could be that this competition will force the issue and the clubs will have to decide what they want to be."

There are a host of problems with the top tier of Scottish clubs going semi-professional, not least the need to find additional funding. Clubs like Ayr already are semi-professional while Selkirk coach Kevin Barrie admits it would be almost impossible for his club to find the finance. There is at least one potential Premier One sponsor waiting in the wings although it is said to be demanding a reduction in numbers from 12 to eight teams in order to concentrate the talent; something that the clubs have resisted to date.

"The problem with reducing numbers is that there is a danger you will lose the geographical spread of Premier One," McKillop says. "We already have six clubs, half the division, coming from the Edinburgh area and if you cut the numbers to eight you risk having just one club in the Borders, maybe just one in Glasgow with perhaps no clubs north of the Forth."

McKillop's fears are echoed by Ian Barnes, another Premiership coach and the man who represents the interests of the top clubs on the SRU Council. Barnes often finds himself at loggerheads with Murrayfield's mandarins but his frustration is genuine when he repeats what numerous others in the club game are saying: "Murrayfield doesn't take us seriously."

"On balance you have to agree that the fewer teams that are in Premier One the higher the standard would be but I have a real issue of going straight from 12 to eight teams; you just wouldn't get the geographical spread.

Instead Barnes suggests a compromise deal whereby the Premiership is initially split into two leagues of 12 before the New Year and then spilt again into three leagues of eight, dependent upon placings, after Hogmanay. The top eight would play each other once, as would the middle eight and so on. This would give teams a total of 18 fixtures in all with the greater intensity coming after the holidays. The structure is not without merit.

One Murrayfield insider suggested that, if the clubs take the semi-professional route, the Union may eventually be in a position to offer some modest financial support along the lines of the WRU who give Welsh clubs £50,000 per annum.

Ultimately only the Premier One clubs can decide their own future but they may need to do so soon. While there is an overwhelming agreement within the league that Scotland's top clubs should be narrowing the gap with the professional game, there is all too little consensus on exactly how to make that happen.

This article was originally posted on 23-Aug-2009, 07:01 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 23-Aug-2009, 09:21.