SCOTTISH rugby has suffered more than a few low points during the professional era, but surely nothing has been so squalid and dispiriting as the row which staggered on all summer between the SRU and the management of one of its own teams.
Here were two closely related organisations – one the country's governing body for the sport, the other a professional side playing its home games at the national stadium – at each other's throat. It was a deeply destructive dispute, and one, moreover, which many outsiders saw as the product of nothing more meaningful than a personality clash.
In one corner was Gordon McKie, the chief executive of the SRU and the man charged with restoring the game in Scotland to something approaching rude health. In the other, Bob Carruthers, the major shareholder of Edinburgh, one of the few entrepreneurs who had been willing to pump his money into rugby north of the Border after many others had shied away.
Given the long-stated desire by Murrayfield to recruit outside finance, and given McKie's insistence in March that the SRU did not have the money to run two professional teams, the tactics adopted towards Carruthers appeared curious in the extreme. The businessman and his colleagues had an evident love of rugby, an obvious desire to make Edinburgh a success, and the financial clout at least to start out on the right road – but that did not seem to be enough.
The row simmered on in the background for some time before becoming public knowledge at the start of July, when Edinburgh withdrew a dozen internationals from Scotland's World Cup training squad, claiming the SRU had been withholding funds. Three days later the players were released, but 24 hours after that Carruthers deepened the conflict by resigning Edinburgh's associate membership of the SRU.
On 12 July, Edinburgh became SRU members again, but by then the rules of engagement had changed. The SRU's plan was now to regain control of Edinburgh – in effect, to renationalise it. At the end of the month, it announced that "no further monies" would be advanced to Edinburgh. Having been left in no doubt as to how far the Union would go to, Carruthers then wearied of the dispute, and announced he would walk away if his original investment were returned by the SRU.
If that was intended as an olive branch, Murrayfield responded by snapping it in half and throwing it back at the businessman. Far from offering to return any money, they ordered Edinburgh out of the stadium and demanded "repayment" of £1.4million.
Eventually, in any dispute, such posturing has to end if a settlement, amicable or otherwise, is to be reached. The end came on 10 August, when Edinburgh reverted to being wholly owned by the SRU, and Carruthers received a financial settlement in his favour.
Such were the bare bones of a dispute which at times even baffled some of those most closely involved in it. By the end, even many who had sided with Carruthers were glad it was over, and normality of a sort could be resumed. And, after a decade in which Scottish rugby has been riven by political turmoil, most ordinary supporters surely looked forward to a season in which the headlines would be about rugby rather than off-field ructions.
Edinburgh's Scotland players were able to get on with their preparations for the World Cup rather than worrying about the state of their contracts, and so to many the retaking of control by the SRU meant that normal service had been resumed. Certainly, apart from Carruthers, there were few obvious, immediate losers – and even in his case the payment by the SRU at least softened the blow.
Scottish rugby did, however, lose Stephen Larkham, whose signing by Edinburgh had been hailed as a major coup. Larkham's contract was not transferred to SRU control, and eventually, in September, the Australian stand-off cancelled his contract with Edinburgh's former owners – an inevitable consequence given there was no team for him to play in.
And it remains to be seen how much long-term damage has been done to the image of Scottish rugby. Certainly, any individuals contemplating investment in the game can hardly have been encouraged by what happened to Carruthers.
The full article contains 722 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
