Too little too late to save ailing Borders

MONEY was the root of all evil for Border Reivers supporters in 2007 as the Scottish Rugby Union decided to cut its losses for the second time in a decade and abandon professional rugby in the sport's heartland.

The Borders had been restored as Scotland's third professional side in 2002, but always laboured as the poorer-funded relation to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Regular defeats, little public interest and the SRU's groaning wage bill finally prompted the union's executive board to act last March and serve notice on the Borders team.

Edinburgh, under new owners in a consortium headed by Fife businessmen Bob and Alex Carruthers, had begun to grow crowds in the capital and foster new, promising links with the club community. Glasgow endured another rollercoaster year with crowds still worryingly low, but they reached the European Challenge Cup quarter-final which persuaded Sean Lineen, the head coach, that with greater resources and a bigger squad he could create a club in the west capable of competing in the top half of the Magners League and with Europe's big names.

More importantly, he convinced Gordon McKie, the SRU chief executive, Andy Irvine, the president, and the Scottish Rugby Board. There was no such persuasion from the south, but neither was there much rugby argument involved in the most contentious decision of 2007. It was purely financial.

The SRU was investing or losing, depending on your viewpoint, over £6m a year on professional rugby as it struggled to work out how to attract people to watch the games, never mind sponsors or broadcasters.

All three teams were complaining regularly of having too little funding and too small squads to compete, and a rollercoaster run of results and inconsistencies, which dogged Scotland at professional and international level, backed that up. With more money required for facilities – Netherdale was already suffering from a union cutback on pitch maintenance and scrapping of a new training pitch – the SRU decided the only solution was to shelve a team.

There was no effective, numerical response in the Borders or Glasgow when the threat of closure was first mooted by McKie, though the suggestion by Irvine and others that the Borders failed to save their team by supporting it merely revealed a jarring ignorance within the union. While admitting they failed to 'sell' pro rugby, board members seemed unaware that the failure to mobilise the Borders rugby community behind the professional team, or behind Glasgow or Edinburgh, meant there would never be any great protest, good or bad.

The SRU believed Glasgow city's 600,000 people, and a million more up and down the district, had a far greater ability to uncover the necessary support and sponsors to make pro rugby sustainable than a region of just 110,000. Intriguingly, the board of ten had no Borderers sitting on it, and the 16-man Scottish Rugby Council just two. It was undoubtedly a difficult decision and McKie and Irvine told clubs it had been made with very heavy hearts, which persuaded them it was right. There was a good argument the union missed that far from being the welcome host for pro rugby the Borders was, in fact, at saturation point and had no more time to give the sport as spectators or money as sponsors.

Since the team was culled, there have been mixed reports of crowds rising. Some struggling clubs continue to hunt supporters, while the run of Gala and Peebles to the Third Division title attracted over 1,000 to Netherdale for a recent top-of-the-table derby in atrocious weather conditions. Would that have occurred had the Reivers still been playing on a Friday night?

There was no escaping the central issue of money. Sat between the rock of a £23m bank debt McKie had to reduce and the hard place of a pro game showing little sign of attracting money, previous regimes had only put off the problem. McKie's men were not for dallying.

The one big regret, however, was that the SRU could not find a way to bring into Scottish rugby any of the prospective investors. One consortium of Scots based in London spoke with McKie about taking over Glasgow and keeping the team in the city, while another, involving Graham Burgess, an Aberdeen oil millionaire, Kenny Logan, the former Scotland winger, and US billionaire Roy Carver were convinced after meetings with English, Welsh and Scottish clubs that they could make a success of a team in Stirling.

Either move could have placed Glasgow into private ownership, and provide the kinds of funds the governing body could never invest, and allow the union to retain a third team. Such moves carry risks and there were too many for this board to contemplate, so 2007 finished with one less professional team, a centralised academy and a home-based pool shrunk again to fewer than 60 pro players.

SRU has cut lifeblood of game

Centralisation policy means fewer chances for talented youngsters, says JIM TELFER

MY FEELINGS towards the SRU now are the same as they were nine months ago – as soon as Gordon McKie came in he wanted rid of a team, and his board quickly decided it should be the Borders. It was nothing to do with rugby or long-term planning.

Clearly, there were financial difficulties and reasons why the Borders would go, but there was nothing different about the problems in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Edinburgh is supposed to be Scotland's rugby city, but the pro team often attracts less than 2,000. Glasgow is Scotland's biggest city and can't get 2,000 at every game, even with a winning team.

This idea that big business will come in and support them is codswallop. It is a very different culture in the cities – rugby matches are more about nights out, with the rugby almost incidental for many, which is quite different to the passion and feeling that exists in the Borders. Six months on, I don't think many people in the Borders realise what they've lost. In ten years, the base of rugby talent in Scotland will be so small that few people from outside the cities will have the opportunity. The SRU is there to serve the whole of Scottish rugby but cutting back to one national academy and two pro teams means the spaces aren't there to offer that. I can think of national under-18 players who were as good as Johnnie Beattie and John Barclay a few years ago who haven't had the same chance to progress because of where they lived, and, unfortunately, that will worsen.

I met people in my time at Murrayfield who thought Scottish rugby revolved around the public school system, and I've watched rugby in Edinburgh and Glasgow being pushed hard by influential individuals totally unaware of the knowledge and expertise indigenous to the Borders that I fear will drift away from Scottish rugby.

Without a professional target to aim for, and learn from, rugby will just become another sport in the Borders.

My fear is many rugby talents in the Borders and north particularly will not reach that level in the future because of the centralising of the pro game.

• Jim Telfer was SRU director of rugby from 1993-2003.

Player development will suffer

Closing the Reivers was a drastic and unnecessary move, insists STEVE BATES

I AM enjoying being back involved in Newcastle, and the Guinness Premiership, but 2007 will remain such a disappointment to me because of the decision to close the Borders.

To have worked so hard to try and make it as successful as possible within the limits we had, financially and otherwise, and then for it all to be scrapped was such a waste and I think the Borders' contribution to Scottish rugby was under-valued.

Look at players such as Ross Ford, Nick De Luca, John Houston, Craig Hamilton and Kelly Brown now playing for Edinburgh and Glasgow and then ask if the Borders did not help the Scottish game.

Scotland international scrum-half Chris Cusiter wouldn't have come through as quickly as he did without the Borders, and I know he was frustrated at our lack of resources and the fact we struggled, but he was a high-quality player who would probably have still gone to a top European club, this year or next, even if the Borders remained.

National team coach Frank Hadden recently effectively said that Scotland were better off without a losing Borders team, but just because we weren't winning every game didn't mean we weren't playing a vital part in Scottish rugby. If we only played the game for wins, then Scotland might as well give up. How many games does he expect to win in 2008? Does losing make the national team worthless?

You can't expect to transform a side like the Borders in a short space of time without giving it the funding it required. We lost to Glasgow by a try in injury-time last season and were very competitive with Edinburgh. We weren't world-beaters, but were moving in the right direction.

There isn't much money going around in Scottish rugby, but it's how you spend it. If, in two or three years time, Scotland are high up the Six Nations table and doing well and Edinburgh and Glasgow are winning more regularly, attracting thousands, then perhaps this was a necessary move. If not, it wasn't.

• Steve Bates was head coach of the Border Reivers from 2004-2007.