SRU sets new targets: win 2015 World Cup and 2016 Six Nations

By RICHARD BATH
Published on 01/07/2012 00:57

ONE of the least controversial SRU annual general meetings of recent times got off to a comic start at Murrayfield yesterday when outgoing president Ian McLauchlan came over all Mrs Malaprop by announcing to howls of laughter that “over the next few months I hope to visit many of those clubs that I missed during my pregnancy” (rather than his presidency).

It then ended in entertainingly surreal fashion as chief executive Mark Dodson defended the two headline-grabbing targets of the four-year plan he had just unveiled – to win the next World Cup and to win the Six Nations by 2016. In between, the more mundane business of the union trundled merrily along, a sea of delegates’ uplifted yellow cards carrying a handful of arcane motions. In a year when Scotland had failed to make it out of their World Cup group for the first time shortly before romping home to a Six Nations whitewash, there was a surprising amount of good news to be had. The SRU reported a surplus of £1.6 million and a £3.1m increase in turnover to £38.2m. The all-important bank debt stands at £13.4m, while the playing budget of the two professional teams, Edinburgh and Glasgow has been increased to £4.2m each, which puts them in line with the teams in the English premiership.

So far so dull-but-worthy. But what really elevated rugby’s annual blazer-fest was the afters, the bit where Dodson provided some details on the two pages of targets outlined in his four-year strategic plan. These ranged from a desire to double the pro teams’ average attendance to 10,000, to consistently reaching the league play-offs and Heineken Cup knockout stages, and a desire to see player numbers increase by almost 50 per cent.

But most of Dodson’s time was spent defending his belief that Scotland winning the next World Cup and a first Six Nations title by 2016 represent reasonable targets. The first is surely pie-in-the-sky, while the second an aspiration that sounds uncomfortably similar to that promised by those two little rays of sunshine, Duncy Paterson and Gordon McKie. To the sounds of sides splitting in Auckland, Cape Town and Sydney, Dodson gave a stentorian defence of his plans, quoting Roosevelt’s “all we have to fear is fear itself” line, George Soros on bar-setting and the Bible on just where meekness will get you.

“Of course the strategic plan is realistic because we have a fantastic group of athletes, special athletes,” said Dodson. “The people who play for the Scottish team have been special since they were eight or nine years old, and have been champions as they’ve come through their schools, and when they get into the national team all of a sudden they undershoot, and we expect them to underachieve. These people have got all of the talent in the world, and the only thing they have to fear is failure itself.

“I don’t think we’ve set the bar high enough in the past, we haven’t expected enough of them, but along with investment and belief comes an obligation to achieve. If you talk to the players, or to Andy [Robinson] and his coaching team, they’re not interested in this notion that we’ll just develop quietly and that the meek shall inherit the earth if that’s alright with everybody else.”

Fair enough, but it was impossible to escape the nagging feeling that perhaps our genial, goateed host must have been at the self-help books again. That much was confirmed when we took a visit to a hitherto unexplored region of the planet Positive Thinking as he mused that Scotland had a cracking first half against France, who then went on to almost beat New Zealand in the World Cup final, so we’re just a whisker away. Then, just as the pause became as pregnant as Ian McLauchlan, and the older members of the press corps began to idly wonder whether beating England at Wembley in 1967 really did make Scotland world champions, we took a segue back into the realms of reality, albeit of the wishful kind. It was that kind of chat.

“We could easily have won three of the five matches in the Six Nations,” said Dodson, to quizzical looks, before adding altogether more reasonably that “and equally we could have lost two out of the three matches in the southern hemisphere. If you look at Wales, they lost seven in a row, but they believed in that squad and it turned into the side which won the Six Nations and got to the semi-final of the World Cup. If you’d said that the team which lost seven on the bounce would become World Cup semi-finalists you’d have been laughed out of the country. Among the top nations in the world it’s all about small margins.”

Dodson’s capacity to accentuate the positive was truly awe-inspiring.

“We have some weaknesses and some areas where we have great strength in depth but we have some really, really talented players, and some who have the ability to be world-class so we’ve got every reason to be optimistic.

“If we all said in the strategic plan ‘let’s all come joint seventh’ then you wouldn’t have me running the business; you’d say ‘you’re shooting that low?’.

“We should all aim for the stars, and we should not be frightened of that.” And, with that, just as we wondered first whether the Lions selectors needed to be alerted, and then whether this was an offer to resign given that the target for the pro teams is to finish in the top eight of the Heineken Cup and the top four of the league, it was all over.

The sad thing is that, in addition to some decent financial stats, there was much to laud.

Scotland have, indeed, just won three nail-bitingly close matches in a row in the southern hemisphere, have blooded 13 new internationalists, including Stuart Hogg and David Denton, and have recruited highly-rated coaches in Scott Johnson and Matt Taylor. Edinburgh reached the Heineken Cup semi-final for the first time and Glasgow reached the Rabo play-offs.

And, under Dodson and chairman Moir Lockhead, the SRU reversed years of giving the impression that they couldn’t give a stuff about their customers by allowing online ticket sales, reopening the car park, giving pitchside access during Edinburgh games and allowing Edinburgh fans access to the President’s Suite.

Except those entirely laudable achievements, not to mention the arrival of new president Alan Lawson, will be lost amid a welter of incredulous headlines about how wooden spoonistas Scotland are going to win the World Cup and a Grand Slam.

Guys, you’ve had a great first year, but you’re not supposed to be able to score own goals in rugby.