Biting cuts puts Gunners' strike on agenda

IN A season that has been beset by one crisis after another, Scottish rugby teetered on the precipice this week when Edinburgh’s rugby squad seriously contemplated strike action last Tuesday. Only a clear-the-air meeting with chief executive Jim McKenzie and Scotland’s Director of Rugby Ian McGeechan on Wednesday morning at Murrayfield defused an ugly situation.

A close reading of the small print in their contracts probably persuaded any dissenting voices that such a radical move would be counter-productive and wiser council prevailed. Meantime the SRU and Edinburgh Rugby’s management have promised to seek ways to meet at least some of the players’ demands.

The Edinburgh players had been pushed to the brink by a long list of grievances with their governing body that included:

Individual contracts being slashed by up to 40%.

Recent test caps on relatively low salaries being given derisory 10% pay hikes despite proving invaluable members of the Scotland’s national match day squad.

Senior test players were disappointed at being pulled out of Edinburgh matches "to rest" outside of international weekends, meaning they lose the chance to collect bonuses for the number of matches played while the absence of front-line players could cost the entire team its win bonuses.

The squad felt that the Union was deliberately dragging its heels on contracts specifically to reduce the options open to players so late in the season and therefore forcing them to accept stinging salary cuts.

Murrayfield expressed themselves unhappy that the pro-teams occupy the bottom three places of the Celtic League, but then went ahead and slashed their budgets.

Approximately two-thirds of the squad went into that Toulouse quarter-final without new contracts, despite all players having been promised them by the end of March.

International players have been told that they will still be in the weight-lifting phase of national fitness coach Marty Hulme’s programme when the season starts, and could therefore miss early Edinburgh games.

In an age when players are constantly being urged to be more professional in every aspect of their lives, this delay in contracts, whether deliberate or otherwise, was wholly unprofessional by the SRU and especially unfair to players with families to support. Rather than attract players back to Fortress Scotland this policy is designed to drive them away and once again begs the question: should the SRU be funding two teams adequately or three teams on a shoestring?

It is understood that Edinburgh skipper Todd Blackadder and McKenzie went in to bat for the team that, with a Celtic Cup final, a Heineken quarter-final and a high water mark of sixth in Europe, has been a rare beacon of hope for Scottish rugby this season.

Surprisingly, during that meeting McGeechan revealed that the overall professional playing budget is no lower than last year’s figure, which suggests that savings made from the three pro-teams will be funnelled towards the national squad. It appears McGeechan and Matt Williams are adopting the top-down approach to national team building, throwing resources at the top squad in isolation, rather than looking to grow the national team organically on the back of excellent pro-teams.

This cuts to the heart of our pro-teams’ problems. Until players feel that playing for Edinburgh - the same goes for Glasgow and the Borders - is an end in itself rather than merely a stepping stone to the Scotland squad, the pro-teams will never compete at the highest level.

It is perhaps time that Phil Anderton did what he was paid to do and make some decisions rather than hide behind Genesis Consultants. The pro-teams need to be set free from the dead hand of the SRU’s control and the sooner the better.

But Anderton has not just attracted the anger of Edinburgh’s rugby players because the Scottish club game looks like it may lose its perennial sponsor, BT. For some reason the dust-up between the phone corporation and the SRU over moving the cup finals day seems to have escalated to a point where BT sponsorship manager Alan Bonus told me: "Sponsorships are a little like a marriage - if it’s not working out then sometimes you just have to say goodbye."

Bonus went on to deny any rift between himself and Anderton but he did admit that the two had enjoyed a "robust" exchange of views. Bonus also pointed out that by the end of the current contract in April 2005 the BT sponsorship would have lasted six years and, referring again to the marriage allusion, mentioned "the seven-year itch".

While Edinburgh intend to re-sign the vast majority of the players who have brought them success this year, the Borders are reportedly unlikely to renew the contracts of a number of players including Scott Paterson, Clark Laidlaw, Tony Walker, Iain Fairly, Kelvin Todd and one of the most popular men in the game, Doddie Weir.

Weir stated last week that he hadn’t given up all hope of signing some sort of a deal with the pro-team but he also admitted that he wasn’t holding his breath. "I feel as though I have one more year in me," he said, "but I am weighing up a few options right now and it may be that I will bring down the curtain on my rugby career and look for a 9-5 job."