THE possibility of scrapping the Scottish rugby cup has come under consideration at a high level forum with further discussions planned which might also lead to league re-organisations, a top clubs' official confirmed today.
Gavin Garden, secretary of the Scottish Premier Clubs Association, was responding to remarks by Hawick president Terence Froud that a national knock-out cup was expensive to run and no longer serves a worthwhile purpose.
"We discussed this briefl
y last week," said Garden. "(It was agreed] individuals and clubs who have specific ideas should circulate them and if there is going to be take-up we will consider accordingly."
Momentum for change to a knock-out event which started in 1996 appears to lie in the Borders. "The Borders clubs are not happy about travelling, poor crowds and lack of revenue. I expect we will want to have a good look at this for following seasons," added Garden, although he ruled out axing the Cup for next season.
While the Cup may be the main focus of dissent – "we may well have reached the stage where there may need to streamlining along the lines of separate tournaments for Premiership and National League clubs," said Garden – further upheaval in league rugby cannot be ruled out. His main concern is the disruption that now occurs annually in the second half of each season.
"We really need to build our programme around league matches and with cup ties occurring in the second half for Premiership teams there can be too many blank weekends. League matches are bread-and-butter and everything should be built around them.
"There have been various sizes of league and when we had ten team leagues over by Christmas in 2006-07 had it not been for experimental laws there would have been minimal interest in the Super Cup which filled in afterwards.
"It is probably time for a fresh look at the Cup to be a priority."
Dundee High official Garden is, however, confident solutions will be found even for next season when Christmas and New Year holidays fall close enough to weekends to cause fixture problems while Scotland have six internationals at home.
"We are pushing to get everything in," he said.
The full article contains 381 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
