David Ferguson: Heartland of Scottish game needs regular SRU support

Published on Monday 27 July 2009 22:43

IT WAS difficult to tell who was enjoying the moment more as the rugby ball was tossed between a group of Melrose schoolchildren and the First Minster Alex Salmond across the Greenyards pitch yesterday.

This was merely a prelude to the more typical political business of a Scottish cabinet meeting, albeit in the Melrose clubrooms today, but if the SRU expected to bask in some PR sunshine with the announcement of an extra 10,000 for Borders rugby they would be mistaken.

As welcome as that amount will be to Scottish Borders Council's rugby coaching, Salmond's appearance amounted to little in tangible benefits for rugby in an area under real pressure to keep the game breathing. Selkirk will be pleased to hear their achievements in lifting the Borders town back among the elite of Scottish rugby applauded, but, with the season just four weeks away the more pressing concerns of lack of finance, lack of players and unease over the future remain.

Rugby is still the No1 sport in the Borders, and while there have been more youngsters playing league football than rugby every week for more than a decade now football clubs are struggling for youngsters and adult players too. The economic blows affecting many parts of Scotland have hit a region of just 105,000 people hard, and sport is not immune to such issues as rural depopulation.

Sports facilities in the Borders have felt little substantive investment over the past 20 years, while the loss of a professional rugby team two years ago pulled the ladder for many young rugby players from the grassroots to the elite level.

The SRU had few choices in the dire need to balance the books at a debt-ridden Murrayfield, but even their promise to ensure the Borders' talent continued to be identified and developed with an academy was not followed through on. Crucially, they help to fund club development officers, yet have fewer full-time employees exclusively in the Borders than ten years ago.

A spat with Gala RFC over the rental of Netherdale has forced the SRU to pay over 100,000 for the upkeep of a ground they demanded be upgraded yet now refuse to use, preferring to pay football clubs instead to stage representative fixtures. There now appears to be movement between Gala RFC and the SRU on that, but still the region watches the professional game move on in Scotland from the outside.

Hawick now know what happens when you fall from Division One – your top players leave for clubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow or head south to England. The SRU's efforts to seize whatever money it can to help youth development is to be applauded. But it will mean little if there are no senior clubs for those youngsters to move into. While SRU chairman Allan Munro was making it clear yesterday that the Borders was not a special case for help, the First Minister was talking of how Scottish rugby would only be strong if Borders rugby was strong; of how Scottish rugby was known the world over through the names of Border towns.

Border rugby clubs do not expect to be treated any differently to others across Scotland, and it is for them to move with the times and grasp the challenges of 21st century sport as efficiently as any other, but a more regular and meaningful show of support from the SRU than a brief, one-off trip south on the coat-tails of the First Minister might help.