SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY REPORTS

Rugby interview: Graham Lowe, the SRU's new performance director

Published Date: 16 May 2010
By IAIN MORRISON
Murrayfield's new performance director may just have the most important job in Scottish rugby, charged with raising standards right across the sport. Why, then, does he get bogged down in management speak?


HE'S BEEN kept hidden away from view for so long that you can't help wondering if Graham Lowe, the SRU's new director of performance rugby, might walk into the Murrayfield interview room with two heads sticking out of his shoulders. Thankfully not. In fact he looks a perfectly ordinary guy although he may just have the most important job in Scottish rugby.

Born in Auckland, Lowe started his professional career as a strength and conditioning coach with the Otago age-group sides in Dunedin and so it is little surprise that he and his family have quickly settled in Edinburgh, the city that supplied Dunedin with its name and much else besides. "The nature and culture is quite similar between Scotland and New Zealand," he says. "We love Edinburgh, there is an easy connection with the Scottish people."

He might not thank you for repeating it but Lowe is best known for his close association with the abject failure of the All Blacks at the last World Cup. He was the man behind the team's conditioning experiment, the withdrawal of 22 key players from the early months of the Super 14, a policy that took most of the flak after New Zealand suffered their worst showing, exiting at the quarter-final stage. Since Graham Henry et al refused to budge, Lowe was the most senior member to leave the All Blacks management group and fingers have been pointing his way ever since, so he wastes no time in clarifying a few points.

"I had an opportunity to stay (with the All Blacks] but I really needed to get out… I had a choice of staying on in my role. I am comfortable with what I did, the amount of effort and time I put into the equation. What it highlighted for me was what a challenge World Cup rugby is and what an opportunity to learn what it's like at that cutting edge of world sport."

As high performance director for the SRU, Lowe effectively has input into everything from the national squad through the pro-teams, Scotland's age-grade sides and even the Premier One clubs, a subject that rather hogs our conversation. Everyone else you ask insists that the Kiwi is doing sterling work but a problem emerges when Lowe finally speaks for himself – he can't open his mouth without coming out with the sort of tortuous management clichés that gave David Brent a bad name. When asked if reducing the number of Premier One clubs might be a way to raise standards Lowe replies: "The key for me is the relationship (between SRU and the clubs]. If we can generate a performance change in a sense that the relationship working with them is going to generate some positive outcomes then that generates an opportunity to consider what the future might be in terms of development of those competitions."

I think he's saying that only when the Premier One clubs really trust the SRU will we see any progress on standards but then why not just say it because, once you hacked your way through the gobbledygook, Lowe talks plenty of sense. A little later Lowe insists he doesn't know the right answer to the original question. "There are advantages and disadvantages to all league structures," is all he will offer.

The New Zealander treads as softly as he speaks, insisting that it isn't his business to tell the clubs how to run their business let alone what numbers should play in the top flight, which is a refreshing change. You can understand why the clubs have warmed to him even if he remains infuriatingly vague on many points. Instead he wants to take advantage of the current mood in the clubs for "change", a word he scatters throughout the conversation like some Democrat campaigner and change is what he is promising. The club structure of next season will look something like this if Premier Rugby reps can agree amongst themselves in a series of meetings starting tomorrow, not that these details came from Lowe:

The 12 teams in Premier One and Two will play each other at the start of the season but only once (ie home or away not both) for 11 matches.

The two top leagues of 12 will then split into three leagues of eight with everyone playing each other once for an added seven matches.

The top eight will determine who wins the title (possibly with a semi-final and final play-off) while the middle eight determines who plays in Premier One the following season (the top four) and who plays in Premier Two (the bottom four). The bottom eight determines who is relegated to National One (the bottom two).

The January-March window will be used to host a Premier League Cup competition, using a pool format and excluding those clubs in the British and Irish Cup who may enter the tournament at the later stages.

After years of being ignored by Murrayfield, the Premier One clubs are naturally delighted to be invited to join the "performance game" as opposed to the "community" one and you have to hope that the British and Irish Cup acts as a spur to further drive standards. All we need now is for some fans to come out of hiding as they did to great effect in the recent Currie v Ayr league decider at Malleny Park, and give more matches that all-important sense of occasion. It must be difficult for players to rise to the challenge of tying their boot laces given the morgue-like atmosphere at some of Scotland's grounds.

Away from the club game, Lowe wants the SRU's senior academy players to be more involved with their individual pro teams while insisting, not altogether convincingly, that all previous decisions were the right ones at the time that they were taken. He talks about the "quite unique weather" in Scotland but, when quizzed on the merits of summer rugby, will only state that: "We want to play our best rugby in the best weather conditions but obviously we have other caveats."

Elsewhere, he wants to keep a sevens squad, especially in light of the sport's inclusion in the Olympics, but concedes that Scotland's players resources are already spread pretty thin. The Kiwi wants to target young players earlier and benchmark them against Scotland's natural opposition at least one year earlier than at present.

All this is sensible stuff but Lowe is still struggling to paint a picture of Scottish rugby as he sees it two, three or five years down the line.

"For me it's about reconnecting because there has been some disconnection of the different components," replies the Kiwi. "The biggest challenge is the playing numbers. We're relatively small so we have to be the best at what we do. We have participation levels that generate the excitement and that generate the players coming through that attract talent to rugby and we have to have a successful national team. So if I project ahead it's about winning rugby and there are a whole pile of structures and discussions that need to be had to generate that."

These sorts of statements can't help but generate broad agreement because the devil is in the detail and Lowe has provided little enough of that.

This article was posted on 16-May-2010, 06:39 by Hugh Barrow.