A TOP Scottish rugby coach has launched a scathing attack on the Scottish Rugby Union accusing it of excessive bureaucracy.
According to Ian Barnes, of Edinburgh Academicals, money that is badly needed at grass roots is instead being wasted on what he calls "pen pushing" at Murrayfield headquarters.
Barnes' broadside appears on the Accies website and the ex-Edinburgh
district supremo and former international second row says: "According to their annual accounts the SRU's average number of non-playing employees in the year to April 2005 was 147 at an average wage of £29,000 – and in the year to April 30, 2007 the average number of non-playing employees has gone up to 153 at an average wage of £33,500. Pen pushing for the SRU is clearly a lucrative pastime!"
He adds: "Their (SRU's) non-playing wage cost for 2007 was almost £6 million or 24 per cent of turnover – explanation in itself for the undisclosed pittance which actually filtered down from central government and the national lottery through the Murrayfield oligarchs to grass-roots."
The denouncement was triggered by the Scottish government's decision to retain sportscotland in spite of an earlier pledge to scrap it – a situation Barnes' compares to the SRU's five year Strategic Plan which he claims contains similar levels of unnecessary bureaucracy.
Labelling the Strategic Plan "a joke" Barnes insists clubs are being kept in the dark about costs. Barnes said that when the Strategic Plan was introduced to Edinburgh clubs at a communication meeting on December 10 no questions were permitted about finance.
"A Strategic Plan without the financial rationale –what happened to (promised) glasnost ... and transparency?" slammed Barnes.
The full article contains 283 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
