Allan Massie: Career longevity creates logjam at top of pro game

JOHN Beattie’s BBC rugby blog is always worth reading. This week, after the Melrose Sevens, he was praising the Jed-Forest twins, Lewis and Gregor Young – quite rightly, for they played terrifically – and was wondering whether they might go on to the top of the game.

Then he remarked on the number of players who look very good indeed, but never fulfil their promise – with no suggestion, I should add, that the Young boys might come in this category. His blog prompted lots of readers to write about outstanding schoolboy and young club players who never quite made it. Others, elsewhere, have recently remarked on players who represent Scotland at age-group level, but don’t go any further.

Well, even before you begin to consider questions of character, ability and ambition, the first reason for this is surely obvious. If you look at the Scotland XV in this year’s Six Nations, you find that ages ranged from 33 (Allan Jacobsen) to 19 (Stuart Hogg). That’s a long span, 15 seasons (inclusive) of age-group rugby. Every year around 25 players will be picked for our under-20 squad (previously the under -21s). Given a bit of overlap, players being selected for two years, this means that more than 300 boys will have represented Scotland at this level in 15 seasons. Very evidently most of them will not play for the full Scotland side.

Look at particular positions in the team and the point is made even more clearly. Since Bryan Redpath retired after the 2003 World Cup, the No 9 jersey has been the property of Mike Blair, Chris Cusiter and Rory Lawson. Nobody else has had much of a look-in. Since Cusiter, the youngest of the three (born June, 1982), was first capped against Wales in 2004, perhaps a dozen scrum-halves have played for Scotland under-20, or under-21. All have found it impossible to break through the Blair-Cusiter-Lawson barrier. One age-group international scrum-half, Lee Dickson, born in Germany in 1985 of a Scottish father and English mother, opted for England, and was capped by Stuart Lancaster this year. Perhaps he looked at the triumvirate, and thought being English the better career move. Who can blame him?

When the game went professional, many thought that its more intense physical demands would result in shorter careers. This hasn’t happened. Quite the reverse indeed. Careers, even international careers, often last longer than in the amateur days, Chris Paterson’s, for instance, from 1999-2011. Ross Ford is 28 this weekend. He was first capped in November 2004. It would be no surprise if he had another four or five seasons at the top. Hookers last a long time; think of the great William Servat. So there is a logjam at the top of the game – in every country, not just Scotland. How many good opensides did Martyn Williams keep out of the Welsh team? How many good Irish No 13s have looked at Brian O’Driscoll and despaired? Even in countries with a bigger pool of players, where competition is intense, international careers quite often span three World Cups.

There are, of course, other reasons why many players who look very good when young don’t make it to the top. Some, quite simply, don’t want to play professional rugby. They are happy staying with their amateur club and playing alongside their friends. They like rugby but they have other things in their life that they like as much or more. You may say they lack the ambition to make the most of their ability; you may say they are sensible and well-balanced. Some are given professional contracts, but, finding they remain fringe players, drop out or are discarded. It doesn’t help that opportunities in the professional game are so very limited in Scotland; it is more difficult here for the late developer, like England’s Nick Easter, to climb the ladder if he has missed the first rungs.

Players do develop at different speeds. A boy may be outstanding at age-group level simply because he is more mature, physically or mentally, than his contemporaries. In time they catch up and he is left behind. Again it is possible to shine at schoolboy and youth level simply because you do one thing much better than those you play with or against.

But that one thing – running at exceptional pace, for instance – may not be enough to allow you to succeed later – when indeed, the pace may no longer be exceptional.

Finally there is simple bad luck. Older readers may remember Wat Davies, a red-headed Hawick flanker of the early Seventies. Rather like Glasgow’s Chris Fusaro, he offered perpetual motion and was a tremendous tackler – even though comparatively slightly built.

He starred in a Scotland trial and was picked for the first game of the Five Nations. Playing for Hawick the Saturday before the international, he injured his knee badly, was out of the game for a long time, and never the same player again.

If he had chosen to miss that club match, he might have played for Scotland for years; he was that good. Or consider Tom Philip, capped, aged 20, in 2004; injured and out of the game within the year.