SO, THE dust has settled on a season of dramatic highs and lows, and it's time to head into rugby's summer recess.
It's also time to take stock. Where does Scottish rugby stand? More pertinently, where does Frank Hadden stand? You wouldn't need to have won The Apprentice to be able to construct a half-decent CV for Hadden from the past year.
This was a season
in which Scotland maintained their record of making the knock-out rounds in every World Cup, in which his team won the Calcutta Cup for a second successive time at Murrayfield, in which they travelled across the globe to beat Argentina, the third-best side in the world, for the first time since 1990.
Yet less than six months ago the Scotland coach's days looked to be numbered, with Andy Robinson the odds-on favourite to replace him. Even after last week's win the speculation surrounding his position refuses to go away. Melrose coach Craig Chalmers is one of the few to put his head above the parapet and call for Hadden to go, but he's by no means alone.
Hadden placed himself under the spotlight before the Six Nations by admitting that he had questioned whether he wanted to continue as Scotland coach, with many believing he was after a role as director of rugby. His position was further compromised when SRU chief executive Gordon McKie would only offer him a one-year rolling contract rather than a long-term deal.
The arrival of Robinson has also cast a shadow. His feat of guiding a bunch of Edinburgh youngsters to fourth in the Magners League table is in contrast to Hadden's record at Edinburgh. His star-packed side were regularly trounced in the Valleys and even when they made the Heineken Cup quarter-final, they finished 10th in the league.
Robinson's success as Scotland A coach also undermined Hadden. Not only did they beat Italy 35-17 and score ten tries while dismantling Ireland A by 67-7 the night before Scotland were eviscerated at Croke Park, they did so playing a brand of free-running entertaining rugby.
Robinson's A-team also undermined the argument that Scotland don't have strength in depth: six of the backs who played in those two A tests won caps in Argentina, as did flanker Al Strokosch.
Informed chat from Murrayfield insists that neither Robinson or Sean Lineen, who was co-coach of the A team and who had a successful first season as Glasgow coach, want the Scotland job at the moment. Both gave undertakings to young players re-signing contracts that they would be with Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively, and both apparently feel they are near to becoming genuine league challengers. Having been undermined from within when with England, Robinson is not keen on a role reversal.
Nor are there any other obvious options as Hadden's successor. Matt Williams' disastrous tenure means there is a residual resistance to a coach who is unfamiliar with the Scottish game while McKie has little appetite to pay the sort of big bucks that would persuade a Warren Gatland, Jake White or Marcello Lofreda to throw his lot in with Scotland. If Scotland fail to make the top-eight nations and get a difficult World Cup draw, even large wads of cash may not be enough.
With the exception of Ian McGeechan, Gloucester's Bryan Redpath is the most senior Scot coaching professionally, and he is only an assistant coach. Former Borders coach Steve Bates was offered the Scotland job before Hadden (he turned down the offer of temporary charge to go on holiday with his family) but has joined Newcastle. Todd Blackadder and Pat Lam may be options one day, but both recently took up coaching positions with Canterbury and Auckland respectively.
Hadden remains vulnerable because international rugby is all about results and his are poor. Indeed, after a first season in which Scotland beat England, France and Italy, Hadden's record stands at two Six Nations wins out of ten, just one better than Williams. That first season is beginning to look more like a dead cat bounce than the start of something special.
With Robinson and Lineen joining the Scotland set-up, Hadden is now in an invidious position, as the Argentina tests showed. Bringing in John Barclay and Phil Godman, the switches that won the test, were ascribed to Robinson and Lineen. So too the use of set moves of the sort that Hadden has conspicuously failed to use. Ditto the directive to run from deep.
The acid test for Hadden will come during the forthcoming run of autumn internationals and the 2009 Six Nations. Williams' fate was sealed when disgruntled fans started voting with their wallets and stayed away. This season Scotland were booed off their field against France and tickets for the Calcutta Cup were unusually easy to come by. McKie will not tolerate empty seats.
The press box is no refuge either. Hadden harbours a paranoia and deep antipathy towards the fourth estate that is now being reciprocated. After the win at Velez Sarsfeld, Frankie Deges, an Argentine journalist, asked Hadden how disappointed he was to have conceded a late try.
"That's exactly the sort of question I'd expect from you," fumed Hadden. "You've been disrespectful to us all week."
A bemused Deges had received the same schoolmasterly ticking-off administered to the Kiwi journalists who asked Hadden why he fielded a second team against the All Blacks. The Scottish and English journalists copped it after the Calcutta Cup.
Hadden is in the calm before the storm. Beating Argentina was a start, but with both sides under-strength (Scotland were without three first-choice starters while ten of the Pumas' World Cup team were unavailable), the Scotland coach knows that he still has it all to do.
The full article contains 988 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
