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Published on Wednesday 29 January 2003 00:00

CLUB rugby is not what it was. There are no 3rd XVs any more, the great days of 3,000-4,000 supporters have gone and clubs are becoming empty museums to the past.

The first of those two sentences is wholly accurate, but it does not set in stone the second as fact. Club rugby in Scotland, circa 1980, was a time I remember well, as the town in which my family had landed was Galashiels and the maroon-shirted men of Gala were attracting thousands into their Netherdale home by putting all and sundry, including those nasty green warriors, to the sword.

It was a fine time to be a Gala supporter. It was not quite so pleasant for the likes of Melrose, Kilmarnock or Langholm, of course, who were languishing at the foot of Division One, nor for followers of Ayr or Aberdeen Grammar School FPs, as their teams slid further down the divisions.

Those clubs did not enjoy crowds of several thousands, and with no Scottish cup competition back then the only distraction from the monotony of league rugby was the spring sevens circuit.

Now, in 2003, it must feel great to be an ever-present at Meggetland, as Boroughmuir bid to add a second Division One championship to two cup successes. They do not, however, attract thousands to games, despite their dominance over the rest of Scottish rugby, clear evidence of the upheaval in club rugby.

It is apt, perhaps, that one casts the mind back over how that has occurred just weeks after the main driving force behind the change has announced his intention to retire.

Jim Telfer, who will step down as director of rugby with the Scottish Rugby Union at the end of the 2003 World Cup, after ten years in charge, has been at the helm of the revolution which has swept through Scottish rugby and left clubs with a new fight for survival.

While the SRU’s decision in 1996 to launch professional districts in European competition was the obvious turning point for clubs, many cite 27 August, 1995 as the day that Scottish club rugby began to slip into the shadows. That was the date when the International Rugby Board, at a famous meeting in Paris, decided that it could no longer regulate the sport on an amateur basis, with ‘illegal’ payments so widespread the term ‘shamateurism’ had become a well-worn cliche, and declared it officially professional: players could now be paid to play. As a result, several wealthy but often misguided ‘investors’ stepped into the game, bought teams and drove up players’ wages. In order to compete at the top levels, rugby clubs now needed the money to back their ambition, as players began to turn their back on one-club loyalty for the offer of a career in the sport they loved and could play.

However, for Telfer, the catalyst for change occurred not at the momentous Paris meeting, but two years earlier, when the All Blacks tore apart a South of Scotland side in a humiliating display of unprecedented superiority.

There are various reasons why the date 10 November, 1993 remains etched in Telfer’s mind and why it ignited his unswerving commitment to change.

The humiliation of an 84-5 defeat to New Zealand in the Borderer’s own backyard, an undoing of the proud district he represented with distinction, and captained and coached, made ‘Black Wednesday’ hard to stomach. There was also the fact that the South had won the interdistrict championship only two weeks earlier, as well as the under-21 and under-18 versions that year, so were considered the best Scotland had to offer, while, rubbing it in, most of the team came from Telfer’s hugely dominant, championship-winning Melrose side. This was not merely a bad day for Borderers, but an embarrassing stripping of Scotland’s proud rugby strength.

The All Blacks hammered home the point by beating Scotland 51-15 at Murrayfield, while the Scots went on to collect the wooden spoon in the 1994 Five Nations Championship.

That was really the beginning of the end of clubs’ pre-eminence over the game in Scotland. The friendly matches that winter against Irish provinces, though an unwelcome distraction for many, provided an insight into the route Telfer and the SRU were to take.

The Irish promoted their provinces as their new professional tier, and through comparisons of the leading nations, the populations around major English and French clubs formed core parts of the Union’s arguments for Scotland to adopt a similar district approach to professionalism. Melrose, for instance, relied on a local population of just 2,000.

While the likes of Leicester, Newcastle, Bath and Gloucester spread their feelers through populations of several hundreds of thousands near and far, the French use an even deeper, more organised pyramid system, where a plethora of amateur teams feed into a small group of semi-professional clubs who, in turn, produce players for their province’s fully professional team at the apex. Believing that Melrose, as Scotland’s leading club, had no chance of surviving in that context, Telfer set out to strengthen the middle tier, the district level, between the clubs and international team. The arrival of professionalism, where financial resources began to overtake the numbers of players as prerequisites for success in clubs’ fight for supremacy, merely crystallised for Telfer how far Scotland was off the pace.

In driving forward a professional game, he hit major obstacles, not least extremely poor marketing of the districts, the lack of affinity with them and, crucially, the financing of four pro teams, which saw the SRU merge them into two in 1998 and take the pro development two steps backwards.

The club game suffered tremendously by losing, along with its star players to pro districts, its pulling power. Supporter numbers dwindled, sponsorship revenue plummeted and interest waned. For clubs like Melrose, Watsonians and Glasgow Hawks, who had formed more ambitious, coherent business plans than the SRU in the mid-1990s, it was an incredibly bitter pill to swallow.

But they have battled through the storm, remained largely intact if reduced in standing, and now, with the stormy waters settling, the focus is on how the club game returns from the shadows, which is crucial to the next decade of development in Scottish rugby.

Without a healthy, attractive club scene, the whole rugby infrastructure in a nation the size of Scotland is precariously balanced. Without clubs providing a good standard of player for the professional teams, their fortunes would wither, top players leave and Scotland coaches be forced to recruit a national team in a similar fashion to the Irish football authorities, from a pool of players all playing in other countries.

That is why it is of extreme importance that the gap between the top end of the club game and the professional tier must be kept narrow. There is now a worrying lack of playing numbers in some areas, a problem shared throughout Scottish sport, but it does not appear to be matched in primary and secondary-age children, where the numbers playing rugby are rising year on year.

The increase in development officers and launch of club academies to help players develop fitness and skills, preparing some teenagers for pro careers and others for no more than good-quality amateur rugby, provides hope that the blood flow into clubs will revive.

Whether some are aware of it or not, rugby has had the benefit of witnessing football’s dice with death in cash-rich TV deals. Clubs never got so big in Scotland that the committees ran up multi-million pound debts which were impossible to repay, and sold themselves to stay in existence.

Because Scottish clubs were not in the vanguard of rugby professionalism, they never became dependent on broadcasting revenues during the explosion of telephone-number deals, and so are not left bankrupt and homeless now the TV companies have slain the golden goose.

With rugby attendances and sponsorship income well below that required to maintain a professional outfit, all clubs survive on Union handouts, but what happens when the Unions run short of money, as happened last year?

The Six Nations Committee received some 30 million less from the BBC in the current broadcasting rights deal than was expected, and the Welsh Rugby Union has, as a result, been forced to cut their handouts to Welsh clubs.

Welsh stars Rob Howley, Craig Quinnell and Neil Jenkins no longer play for Cardiff because it can’t afford them.

The Scottish and Irish unions have, similarly, cut back their expenditure, with Scotland reducing the size of their pro squads by up to 20 per cent and Ireland chopping one of their provinces out of the pro equation altogether.

There is a semblance of light at the end of the tunnel here. Some critics maintain that the professional sides are going nowhere but backwards, but their ability to win respect from the top Welsh clubs and Irish provinces - with wins in Cardiff, Newport, Swansea and Belfast - suggests otherwise.

Their failure to uncover consistency, and win the big games when the heat is turned up, remains a problem and provides fuel for the detractors. The club game is also growing again in many parts of Scotland. A semi-professional environment was predicted by many knowledgeable observers when rugby went open, and after much in-fighting, that is what is occurring. Some clubs, like Glasgow Hawks, remain competitive while steadfastly refusing to pay players to play. Others use the old ‘flat, car and a job’ deals to attract players and some keep their money for coaches.

There are a few, decreasing by the season, who, touched by the excitement of the game going pro, opted for the Sir John Hall school of buying success and continue to dish out full-time wages. Most have realised there is a limit to how much success money can buy in a physical world where a poor man’s hunger can outstrip a rich man’s talent.

Watsonians were a case in point. After suffering relegation to Division Two, they brought in three ex-pros, but none is part of the side now preparing to clinch the second division championship and step back up.

They, like Boroughmuir two years ago, will bring a freshness to the top league, however, as will the other two teams who win promotion this term, with Ayr and newly formed Glasgow Hutchesons’ Aloysians among the challengers.

Whether the move to 12 team leagues next year is the right one or not remains a moot point. The vote for a switch at the 2002 AGM of the SRU infuriated Telfer and Scotland coach Ian McGeechan - who takes over Telfer’s mantle after the World Cup - who felt it was counter-productive to their plans to improve standards by hot-housing players in international camps throughout the spring.

That was one of a few examples, however, of how Scotland’s leading coaches sometimes fail to bring clubs fully on board with their methodology. There remains a lesson there for McGeechan.

The clubs, mindful of how this season has yet to be mapped out from its premature end to the championship in January, were rightly concerned about a lack of vital revenue in the second half of the season, and there will certainly be more scope for variety in 12-team divisions, which, if marketed properly, can help invigorate supporters and clubs.

There will remain cross words and feverish debate between clubs and the Union, but that was prevalent in the last two centuries, so is hardly new. Neither is the challenge faced by clubs in the 21st century, that of trying to reinvigorate the core of Scottish rugby, improve standards and attract supporters.