A recent piece I did for www.rugbyfancast.com
Domestic rugby in Scotland has been in decline for some time now, and yes, a lot of you will undoubtedly disagree with this piece, but you’re rugby fans who have been born and bred in Scotland , you can’t see past your own team and you’re living in dreamland.
According to the IRB website, there are 13,873 senior male players registered to play in Scotland. This number is lower than Australia, France, Italy, Ireland, South Africa, America, Spain, New Zealand, Japan, England, and even Malaysia. To put it simply, the country’s talent pool isn’t large enough to be competing with the best countries in the world.
This is where the national team’s ‘project players’ come in. Scotland are not generating a large amount of quality players from grassroots level up, so they are having to rely on players from abroad whose family history has vague Scottish roots. Sean Maitland and WP Nel being prime examples. I actually have no problem with this, but if it discourages other players who think that their chance of playing nationally is under threat by a ‘project player’, then this needs to be addressed.
The Scottish Rugby Union’s main problem began with the formation of the Celtic league. Originally starting with two clubs, Edinburgh and Glasgow, they decided to introduce the Border Reivers into the league, with disastrous results. The Reivers continuously finished bottom and they were losing substantial amounts of money. In the end, the SRU pulled them out of the league, but only when the union’s debts amassed to over £20 million. They are still currently in huge debt and it is affecting them, and local clubs even now.
Thankfully, at the start of the current season, the Scottish League Championship was restructured. It used to be the case that there were six national leagues, meaning that teams were having to travel all across the country to play. This had a huge effect on players who were mainly amateur, as they just couldn’t give up the time and money to play for their club. Now, only the top two clubs play nationally, the East and West Championships are below these, and regional leagues are below these. This pyramid structure has already been in place in England, Wales and Ireland for a number of years.
Edinburgh are not doing anything to help people’s views on Scottish rugby. They are currently third from bottom in the RaboDirect Pro12 with six wins from 21 games and they finished second from bottom last season. At least Glasgow Warriors seem to be doing something right. They have the right mix of good Scottish talent, both young and old and are sitting second in the table, having secured a place in this season’s play-offs with many tipping them to go all the way and be the first Scottish team to win the league.
Will it take Glasgow winning the league to really reinstate the belief into Scottish Rugby? Maybe. However, with other countries sailing off into the distance in terms of domestic success, Scotland have a lot of catching up to do.
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