Allan Massie: SRU is wise to steer clear of summer tours against the top teams

Published on Friday 28 May 2010 23:18

IT IS understandable that many here are dismayed by Scotland's exclusion from the programme of three-Test visits to the Southern Hemisphere, and consider Andy Robinson's defence of the proposed schedule either evidence that he has been "leant on" or simply wrong-headed.

"Imagine," one contributor to our website wrote, "the outcry if, say, Wales announced it didn't want to tour New Zealand but instead wanted to play the likes of Canada, the US or Portugal."

This isn't actually quite what Robinson said, but that doesn't prevent our critic from declaring that "Scottish rugby is in disastrous decline and the SRU is fiddling while it burns".

Well, I have been a severe critic of the SRU at times myself, but, on this occasion, their decision to opt out of the proposed ambitious schedule seems defensible. (It may be of course that we have been pushed out rather than choosing not to participate. If so, that, too, is understandable.)

One has to start from where we are, and that is a low rung on the ladder. Since the game went professional we have recorded only two victories over the Big Three of the southern hemisphere, both at Murrayfield. Most matches have ended in heavy defeats.

The last time the All Blacks came here, they fielded a below-strength side at Murrayfield and still won quite comfortably. Away from home, we came very close to beating South Africa in the first of two Tests in the summer of 2003, but this was unusual.

Our away record in the Six Nations is not much better. We haven't won in Paris since 1999 or at Twickenham since 1983. Our victory in Dublin in March was our first there this century. We should have won in Cardiff and Rome this year, but lost both games. So we have had one win in Cardiff and two in Rome since we were the last Five Nations champions in 1999.

None of this indicates that we are in "disastrous decline", but it does suggest we are at best treading water. Nobody can sensibly suppose that a three-Test series in New Zealand, South Africa or Australia wouldn't result in at least two heavy, and probably demoralising, defeats. I think that is likely to be the fate suffered by Wales and Ireland, who have agreed to this schedule, but that is their business.

It is reasonable to think that until we are regularly winning two of our autumn internationals and recording away victories in the Six Nations more frequently than has been the case in the last ten years, there is little to be gained from ambitious forays to New Zealand, etc.

We are quite proud that we have reached the quarter-final of every World Cup. It will be a major achievement if we manage to do that again next year, given that England and Argentina are in our pool. Yet the fact is that in no World Cup have we beaten a team that we were not expected to beat, even if we have not lost to one that we were expected to defeat.

This summer's two-Test visit to Argentina is a much more appropriate venture than a comparable trip to South Africa or New Zealand would be. There is of course an argument that you only improve by matching yourself against the best, and it is valid to this extent: that improvement comes when you are sufficiently competitive to make the match close. But there is little reason to believe that any team improves as a result of suffering a defeat by 30 or 40 points.

The website critic who thought it folly to opt out of these tours, went on to make a better point: that it is folly for us "effectively to opt out of sevens just when the abbreviated game becomes massive in the next six years".

Certainly one has sympathy with this opinion. Yet the question of how best we engage in the IRB sevens circuit is difficult to answer. Clearly the present policy of fielding a mix of one or two pros, some young academy players and a couple of promising amateurs is not working.

The results speak for themselves. But what does one do? The Glasgow and Edinburgh squads are smaller than those of their Magners League rivals; they could ill spare even a couple of their best players, most of whom are in the national or Scotland A squads; and if they are not yet in either of these squads, they probably hope to be selected for them.

There are some very good sevens players in the amateur clubs, but, unless they are students who can manage to juggle studies and exams to let them participate in the various tournaments of the IRB circuit, they will usually have jobs which don't permit them to spend much of the winter globe-trotting.

It would be desirable perhaps to form a purely sevens squad of, say, 14 players, but, once again, one comes up against the reality of our position: that we can afford to staff only two professional clubs, each of which requires a match-day squad of 22 players, while each will also usually have several players, as many perhaps as a dozen, temporarily injured and unable to play.

Add to this the need for coaches to rest even key players from time to time and rotate their squad, and it becomes clear there is no easy solution to the problem of how best we form a Sevens squad capable of competing on the IRB circuit with hopes of success.

We are up either against countries with a much greater depth of playing strength or developing nations which can commit their best players to the circuit because they have fewer competing demands on such strength as they have.