THE HERALD REPORTS

Alasdair Reid


BOLD, fearless, unflinching, resolute.

Just a few of the terms that were absent from the reports of Ian McGeechan’s decision to stand down as Scotland’s director of rugby four years ago and accept a job offer from Wasps instead. For as affable as he might have been in his year-and-a-bit as a Murrayfield suit, nobody ever accused him of suffering an excess of moral courage.

Great coach? No question. Brilliant tactician? Tick that box too. Peerless analyst of opposition weaknesses? Unquestionably. Staunch defender of high principles? Eh, we’ll get back to you on that one.

McGeechan was one of the most powerful figures within the SRU during those weeks of mayhem in early 2005 that saw the governance of Scottish rugby go into a tailspin. When the Murrayfield old guard staged a palace coup to claw back power from the modernisers, there was nobody in the game who came close to matching the grand-slam winning coach’s authority. Such was the respect in which he was held that he could have extinguished the uprising with a few words.

But he said nothing. He hummed, he hawed, he prevaricated. At one point, when he was called before the Scottish Parliament’s Enterprise and Culture Committee to explain the crisis in Scottish rugby, he droned on endlessly about pathways, processes and miscellaneous bureaucratic minutiae. It was a masterclass in obfuscatory twaddle.

He could have extinguished
the uprising 
with a few 
words. But he 
said nothing
Invited to nail his colours to the mast, McGeechan dived below deck instead. A close ally of David Mackay and Phil Anderton, the architects of change in the organisation of the game, he had hung on at Murrayfield when the two men had resigned in protest of the disgraceful shenanigans of the SRU’s general committee. A fair enough tactic if he had used his position to condemn the gravy-train brigade there and then. But he didn’t. He said nothing.

Which is why we should be heartily cynical about the fact McGeechan has finally found his tongue. It’s all very well singing like a canary when you have a book to sell, but McGeechan should have been warbling when it mattered. In the end, it was the rank-and-file from Scotland’s clubs who finished the work of Mackay and Anderton. When the going had got tough, McGeechan had hidden behind the parapet.

The ultimate irony is that people should sit up and take notice of McGeechan’s J’accuse performance now. He is using his name, its ring of authority, to castigate the Murrayfield blazeratti now, but refused to use it when it actually mattered. And his accusations are not exactly weighed down by detail – among the rugby chattering classes, most of his yarns have been part of the folklore for years.

And does he name the guilty men? Er, no, he doesn’t. He claims that an unnamed committee member boasted: “I’m a milkman. I milk Scottish rugby for everything I can get out of it.” 
I’ve heard of that line being credited to three different committee members, so its worth is not exactly boosted by any novelty value.

Nor is it any great revelation that senior figures at Murrayfield should have advanced themselves by way of questionable practices. Indeed, I can think of a former director of rugby at the SRU whose appointment was done and dusted behind closed doors, the post never advertised or thrown open to competition. But, for the moment, the name of the bloke seems to have escaped me.




Ian McGeechan will be touring around the UK and Ireland talking about his autobiography Lion Man throughout October. More details to follow.

Thursday 8th October – London
Tuesday 13th October - Northhampton RFC
Wednesday 14th October - Cardiff Millennium Stadium
Thursday 15th October - Ulster Rugby, Ravenhill Grounds, Belfast
Friday 16th October - Munster – Musgrave Park - Thomond Stadium in Limerick
Tuesday 20th - Leeds Carnegie
Wednesday 21st October Glasgow Hawks

This article was originally posted on 5-Oct-2009, 07:31 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 5-Oct-2009, 07:31.