Dixon made redundant in Murrayfield cuts

Published on Friday 16 January 2009 21:27

FORMER Scotland coach Richie Dixon is one of a handful of employees made redundant by the Scottish Rugby Union yesterday as part of the latest wave of cost-cutting and restructuring at the governing body.

He was joined by Iain Goodall, the part-time discipline manager, Gregor Nicholson, who was latterly the SRU's international administration manager, and John Thorburn, the former Borders chief and union's domestic game manager.

The SRU confirmed that all were leaving the union, along with an administrative employee, but declined to comment further. It is understood that the redundancies are linked to a restructuring of the union in line with the five-year Strategic Plan announced at the end of 2007. That has led to some positions being scrapped and new roles created. Dixon, Nicholson and Goodall chose not to apply for new roles and Thorburn was unsuccessful in securing a new post.

Dixon was renowned as a great rugby thinker, at the forefront of the IRB's recent push for new laws to make the game more attractive and playable. He was a Scotland B captain who went on to coach Scotland in the late 1990s, alongside David Johnston, and then Glasgow and the Borders. He recently pioneered a new college course involving rugby and secured IRB funding in his role as special projects manager.

Goodall is a former Scottish referee who has been involved in the SRU's disciplinary system for over a decade, helping to put in place new referee coaching structures, while Nicholson was a key administrative figure in international rugby, particularly in the area of anti-doping.

He was involved this year in the SRU's handling of the Scott MacLeod drugs test, while Thorburn, a former Boroughmuir and Hawick club official, has held several jobs within the union, most recently managing the Border Reivers as it struggled towards a second closure and steering the club game forward as domestic game manager.

Jim Telfer worked closely with all four men in his time as Scotland coach and SRU director of rugby, and he insisted that the SRU was losing a huge knowledge and experience with this latest round of redundancies.

He commented: "Richie has been sidelined for a few years now and I feel the SRU have not made the most of his experience in world rugby.

"He was always a great ambassador for Scotland at conferences because he was a very intellectual talker on rugby. On the field he made a big contribution in various roles over the past 30 years, not always as a head coach, but in key assistant and advisory roles. I moved him out of the job as Scotland's head coach. That really hurt him, I know, but he never let that affect our relationship, which was a measure of his loyalty to Scottish rugby.

"Gregor has been an outstanding administrator, very meticulous in what he did, and Iain Goodall was a positive character and did a lot of work to help improve Scottish refereeing.

"John was a true administrator, an encyclopedia of Scottish rugby, and went out of his way to get to know people and make contacts around the world. You speak to many people in New Zealand rugby and they know John Thorburn.

"All of these people did a lot behind the scenes for Scottish rugby, work never reported. Nobody's irreplaceable, but there is a vast knowledge of rugby that the SRU are going to suddenly lose with these guys leaving."