Do Scotland’s unloved pro rugby clubs have a future?
By Neil Drysdale
17 January 2011 08:33 GMT

Time for change: Glasgow and Edinburgh aren't drawing an audience and are struggling to win on a regular basis. Pic: © SNS Group
Not even the most rampant apologist for the SRU could have glossed over the 37-0 defeat suffered by Edinburgh against Northampton in the Heineken Cup on Friday night. It was a depressing experience for the Scots, and not merely on the pitch where Rob Moffat's side fell victim to a five-try mugging against opponents who were no better than efficient, but off the field as well when one discovered that more than 13,000 fans had paid their admission money at Franklin's Gardens.

That figure compared with the 1653 who turned up to watch Edinburgh lose to the Llanelli Scarlets at Murrayfield the previous week and the 2654 who surveyed Glasgow's creditable 20-10 success over Wasps on Sunday. Whatever way one looks at it, the case for sticking with Scotland's two professional teams, in their present format, is diminishing with every passing month and the time must surely be approaching when the SRU decides that if private buyers aren't interested in them, they should be put out of their misery.

The argument for persisting with Edinburgh and Glasgow lies in the claim that regular exposure to Magners League action allows their players the opportunity to test their mettle and develop a winning mentality against their Welsh, Irish and Italian counterparts. Yet the merits of that rationale have been sorely tested throughout the last 12-18 months.

For starters, both teams are treading water in the Magners event - where they have won only 10 out of 25 fixtures between them this season - and their European results have been similarly underwhelming, to the stage where the leading clubs in England and France are surely entitled to ask how much longer the Scottish representatives should be granted the luxury of automatic qualification.

If there were any indications that the composite ensembles were slowly, but surely, gathering new supporters, that might provide another defence for their retention, but sadly, the opposite happens to be true, with attendances having fallen by between 25% and 30% compared with their crowds last season. And, considering that there are no reserves of money to bolster these squads with the sort of high-quality foreign imports whose gifts might persuade the unconverted to trot along to Firhill or Murrayfield on a Friday evening, the duo's futures look increasingly bleak.

More than a decade ago, several Scottish clubs proclaimed their grand ambition to represent their country on the Magners stage, and subsequently engaged in protracted and damaging internecine warfare with the Murrayfield-based panjandrums, to the benefit of virtually nobody. Those days have gone, and there is no point in commencing a fresh round of hostilities, but equally, it seems futile to go on flogging a dead horse, which is what Glasgow and Edinburgh amount to in rugby terms these days.

The SRU will be deprived of the benefit of autumn Test revenue this year - because of the World Cup in New Zealand - and they are in no position to bolster the resources available to Moffat and Sean Lineen - or the people who might succeed these coaches if their side's results are deemed unacceptable by their employers. Rugby, meanwhile, is facing a general downturn in audiences, because fans have less money than they did two or three years ago.

In this prevailing climate, it doesn't require a genius to fathom that the Scottish professional teams are going backwards, in terms of shifting tickets, justifying the SRU's investment and spreading the game beyond its old heartlands. As somebody who has travelled round the country throughout the last five years, I have discovered no new zeal or fresh rise in enthusiasm for what Glasgow and Edinburgh are doing, and this in spite of a significant (and commendable) effort by both organisations to get their act together.

On a few occasions, such as when the 1872 Cup was contested over Christmas and New Year in the 2008-09 season, there were fleeting hints that they might have solved their problems, given the substantial rise in supporter numbers. But that has proved a false dawn and, despite a string of creditable performances at various junctures - such as this weekend's triumph for an injury-depleted Glasgow line-up against Wasps -the reality is that Murrayfield remains a morgue on Magners nights, whilst Firhill is rarely in any danger of exceeding its capacity, and that despite the progress made by the Warriors last winter.      

The question which most urgently demands a response is: So what do we do now? Well, basically, there are three options. Firstly, we can persevere with the status quo, which means that the SRU carries on bank-rolling the teams, to the detriment of the greater good, even as the best clubs in England and Europe cherry-pick the likes of Kelly Brown, Alasdair Strokosch and Ally Hogg. That shouldn't be an option. Or, secondly, the union could announce that it was only continuing to invest in the sides until the end of the 2011-12 campaign and was thereafter looking for sell them on to private business as viable concerns. This, of necessity, would mean the SRU relinquishing all control over Glasgow and Edinburgh, which might in itself be a blessing, since there is widespread suspicion - misplaced or otherwise - of how Murrayfield carries on running the significant affairs of both Glasgow and Edinburgh. It might be that prospective buyers are thin on the ground or non-existent, which would in itself be revealing, but the administrators will never find out unless they accept they are operating in the free market and act accordingly. This, in turn, could lead to more sensible options for staging matches: Murrayfield should not be used except for internationals and Glasgow should not be giving money to a football club, for the use of Firhill, when there is such a dearth of cash in rugby.

As for the third suggestion: what about the SRU saying to the likes of Ayr, Glasgow Hawks and West of Scotland in one part of the country and Boroughmuir, Currie and Melrose in the other: how do you fancy forming co-operatives and taking over the day-to-day running of Glasgow and Edinburgh from us, whilst working with the other grassroots clubs to unearth new players and provide pathways between the amateur and professional rungs?

This might create practical problems at the outset, but it may just prove to be the glue which binds everybody together in the Scottish game. Many club officials have long bemoaned what they view as the failings of the SRU. Now, here's a chance for them to do better. And I happen to believe that if the best clubs in the East and West (and South) of Scotland could overcome their long-standing rivalry and pool their resources, they could thrive in both the professional and amateur tiers. After all, Ayr command crowds in excess of 1000 at Millbrae for their Premiership fixtures and these are real, committed, supporters, men and women who will genuinely back their team every inch of the way. It is a similar story at Currie, at Melrose, at Stirling County, and elsewhere, and these organisations are not artificial constructs, but serious grassroots hotbeds of rugby.

Ultimately, Edinburgh and Glasgow are stuck in limbo at the moment. (Even the win over Wasps arrived in the knowledge that Lineen's team had already exited the tournamanent.) At the very least, we need to debate what is to be done to enhance their status and improve their fortunes, to make sure that professionalism doesn't wither on the vine in Scotland.
 
 
 

This article was posted on 17-Jan-2011, 09:33 by Hugh Barrow.