Tom English: Should Robinson get the Scotland job? Don't even think about it.

Published on Saturday 4 April 2009 19:54

DON'T DO IT, Gordon McKie. Just don't do it. Rid yourself of any notion you may have of moving Frank Hadden to an upstairs role as director of rugby. Cleanse yourself of this madness, this farrago. Look, I don't believe for a second you're thinking that way. You're a businessman and you'll know the lunacy of promoting somebody who has already failed. It'll be paper talk. Speculation. A bit of a flyer. But just in case it isn't. Don't do it!

Hadden must think we really have it in for him here. We've been heavily critical. Now he's gone from his job and we're still writing about him. We don't wish him any ill. In fact, we wish him luck. I can't say I ever knew him but I get the feeling that he's a decent man who just didn't have the experience to crack the puzzle of how you take Scotland forward. It all got a bit barmy towards the end there, but Hadden gave it everything he could possibly give it. Nobody can deny that.

So who can improve things? This is a seismic moment in the history of Scottish rugby. Look what happens when you get it right. Warren Gatland wins a Grand Slam in his first season with Wales, Declan Kidney wins a Grand Slam in his first season with Ireland. Scotland won't judge themselves by those measures but there are more victories in this squad than their percentages suggest. They're a better team than they look.

The post will be advertised and you never know what good ones will emerge from that. But at the moment Andy Robinson is the front-runner. It makes sense in some ways. He inherited an Edinburgh set-up that was in an advanced stage of implosion, what with all the bluster from Bob Carruthers and all the bad blood with McKie. It was a war zone that Robinson walked into and he brought peace.

He brought progress, too. And it's continuing. Edinburgh are fourth in the Magners League. That's impressive. They've only got Munster, Leinster and the Ospreys. The first two are in a different stratosphere as regards budgets and player resources and the Ospreys aren't light years off them. Edinburgh are a mere blip by comparison but Robinson has made them competitive.

Should he get the Scotland job? Emphatically no. Don't even think about it. Banish the idea to the same furnace where Hadden as director of rugby is smouldering. I don't have any doubts about Robinson's ability to do the gig justice. I don't read too much into his awful period in charge of England. In fact, he is a better coach and a more mature coach now than he was then. He was honest enough to recognise the mistakes he made with England and he's moved on.

Robinson is an impressive operator. Which is precisely why the SRU need him to keep doing what he's doing at Edinburgh. If Scotland are to be reborn as a rugby nation, if they are to get a small taste of the glory that Wales and Ireland have experienced in recent times, then the roots of professional rugby here are going to have to be strong.

The turnaround in fortunes in Ireland, from basket case losers to Grand Slam winners, only started when Munster became strong under Kidney. That was the beginning of it. Kidney nurtured the roots for six or seven years and eventually, in his second stint as coach, won the Heineken Cup and then won it again.

Leinster got strong because rugby got sexy, because money came into it from big business, because of Munster. Leinster wanted a piece of what Munster had and they're getting there. But it all started with Kidney staying to tend his developing team.

Robinson could be Scotland's Kidney. Maybe not on such a grand scale but he could be the one building from the bottom up, fostering a team that could some day soon make inroads in Europe. Yanking him out of that puts it all at risk.

If he applies for the position, there's a problem. If he gets knocked back will he see it as a snub and head somewhere else? McKie has got to box clever here. Robinson hasn't indicated what he's doing yet, not one way or another, but the hope is that McKie can keep him happy at Edinburgh and bring in another heavy hitter for the top job.

Who's out there? That'll be the task of a selected panel of experts to discover. Is Eddie Jones really locked in at his Japanese club? Is the money there for a Jake White or a Shaun Edwards? Who's worth considering from the southern hemisphere?

Last autumn Kidney had a right good look around the Tri Nations and came up with a couple of talents. Gert Smal from South Africa was appointed as his forwards coach. Smal is uncompromising but quite brilliant at his job. He got Les Kiss from Australia as his defence coach. Kiss is a serious operator. And Alan Gaffney, once of Munster, Saracens and Australia, as his backs coach. Gaffney is a wise old bird and a key man in the set-up.

They cost plenty but they won a Grand Slam. They sold out Croke Park, they brought tens of thousands of people on to the streets for the celebration, they made a fortune in merchandise and all manner of Slam paraphernalia. The economics of it are working out just fine.

McKie needs to be bold. Think Grand Slam and appoint accordingly.