JASON White was wrong during the Six Nations when he said the press had suggested the Scotland players were "rubbish". The problem is precisely the opposite: that the vast majority of Scotland's rugby players are definitively not rubbish.
If there is a finer scrum-half in world rugby than Mike Blair, he has escaped my notice. Chris Paterson remains the most deadly goalkicker on the planet. Nathan Hines is one of the most feared locks in France and both Alasdair Strokosch and Jas
on White are giants in the English Premiership. Yet for all that Scotland remain a team stuck in a losing rut.
The obvious, if trite, conclusion is that it's the coach's fault. Scotland have now played 30 Tests under Frank Hadden, with their 12 wins including two victories over Romania, a win over Portugal and a win over an experimental Ireland side in the lead-up to the World Cup. Only one of those wins, a last-gasp 13-10 win in Rome, was in an away fixture, although the decisive World Cup game against the Azzurri was on neutral ground. Of the traditional 'Big Eight' Test-playing nations, Hadden's Scotland have played 20 matches and won just four, beating England (twice), France and that weakened Ireland team, all at Murrayfield.
Yet even though this is a team which only avoided a second consecutive wooden spoon by a whisker, it is easy to make a strong case that there is no one else who could do a better job. The foreign route has already been tried and was a disaster, with Mattie Williams reducing Scotland to a miserable laughing stock. Even if the cash-strapped SRU could afford an international A-list coach, Jake White's haughty dismissal of Ireland suggests it would be a struggle to entice one to take on the job.
It's easy to see why a top foreign coach would think twice about throwing in his lot with Scotland when even those Lions legends Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer came within seconds of seeing Scotland get knocked out of the 2003 World Cup by Fiji. Then there is the domestic option. Andy Robinson is, of course, on the payroll and has worked wonders with Edinburgh, as he did with Bath with whom he won the Heineken Cup. Yet he struggled badly with England and some wise old heads wonder whether it is still too soon for him to immerse himself once more in the choppy waters of Test rugby.
There are any number of reasons for preserving the status quo. And they all employ the sort of rank defeatism in which no other truly ambitious nation would indulge.
Eddie O'Sullivan may have won three Triple Crowns at the helm of Ireland's Golden Generation, but as soon as it became clear he had no more to offer, he was gone, even though there is no obvious successor. Wales, too, acted decisively when Gareth Jenkins' side failed to make the World Cup quarter-finals, a decision that has paid off handsomely. Even after beating Ireland so impressively, England look set to jettison Brian Ashton: they are finally acknowledging what has long been clear to everyone else, that Ashton is not the man for the job.
Sometimes it's not a question of whether another coach could do a better job, more one of momentum. If the bus is heading in the wrong direction you change the driver. The players may still have trust in Hadden, but the rugby-watching public booed his side off the pitch against France and Edinburgh was awash with tickets in the days leading up to the Calcutta Cup clash. For many, the expensive World Cup capitulation against the All Blacks still rankles.
Rugby in Scotland depends entirely on the national side's fortunes, and the side has been underperforming by any objective criteria. No matter how harsh, there can be no room for sentiment. The Union's chief executive Gordon McKie is in the process of performing his post-Six Nations review and while the temptation will be to tinker with the coaching team at Murrayfield, the only way to effect a genuine sea change in player and fan attitudes is change at the top. Painful though it may be, it is time for a new broom.
Gorgie disillusion comes with a lack of answersA FOOTBALL club is not a business, it is an institution rooted firmly in the community. Our clubs define us, which is why they matter so much to us. It may yet to have dawned on Vladimir Romanov, but he is not the owner of Hearts in any conventional sense; he is the club's custodian, the keeper of the flame.
If that sounds rather hackneyed, the practical ramifications of that culture will be felt at Tynecastle over the coming weeks when it's time for Jambo season ticket holders to stump up their cash for the 2008-9 season tickets. If my entirely unscientific straw poll of eight Hearts season ticket holders is any guide, as few as 25% of the supporters on whom the club's future depends will be signing up for the next leg of the journey aboard the Kaunas Express.
The news this week that Hearts' debt has risen by £8m to £37.5m has crystallised opinion down Gorgie way. Fans invest in the club because they have a sense of ownership, only they no longer do.
With the on-field action so lacklustre that the managerless side has only the slimmest chance qualifying for Europe, the Hearts fans who have traditionally been able to fall back on the fact that they win ugly, are now having to put up with just plug ugly.
More to the point, there seems no exit strategy, no plan to make it all better. Talk of challenging for the Champions League is a distant, tragi-comic memory, as are the days when Romanov was a regular fixture in the directors' box. Debt now exceeds assets, which is usually the point at which a business is technically insolvent and must cease trading. Sure, the debts are owed to Romanov's personal piggy bank, but in these days of crisis in the financial markets and of dangerously limited liquidity, banks are far from the failsafe bets they once were.
Which brings us back to next season. How does Romanov see Hearts reducing the burden of debt which will eventually shackle the club's ability to buy and retain quality players? What's the long-term plan for trading out of danger? What will happen if season ticket revenues fall disastrously? The problem, as ever, is that every enquiry just spawns more questions and no answers.
March madnessI WAS in America last week and witnessed the annual affliction that is known as March madness.
For those who have never seen this phenomenon in the raw, the nuttiness in question is the NCAA – college basketball finals – and it completely grips the country.
With three games played each day at staggered times and not just shown on television but also streamed live on the internet, the economic productivity of the country dips by 20% in the month. Somehow you just can't see that happening for the Boat Race or the Varsity Match.
The full article contains 1212 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
