Dodson ready to lead a ‘new start’ for Scottish game

FINDING a new path to improvement for Scotland’s leading rugby players has become the all-consuming passion of the SRU’s top brains in the wake of the World Cup pool knock-out, and businesses across Scotland are to be asked to play their part.

New SRU Chief Executive Mark Dodson has been in Auckland over the past week holding meetings with Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, Sir Moir Lockhead, the SRU chairman, and president Ian McLauchlan among other leading figures.

He is part of a new wave led by McLauchlan and the board, who helped to persuade former Chief Executive Gordon McKie in May that his time was up. One of Dodson’s first acts on starting in the new post a fortnight ago was to take a similar tack with McKie’s right-hand man, Eamon Hegarty, the former SRU Finance Director. Moving out two of what were perceived to be obstacles to progress in Scottish rugby is in many ways the easy part; moving the tanker that is the Scottish game forward a whole other challenge.

But Dodson is nothing if not enthusiastic. He spoke at length with the media in an Auckland hotel yesterday on the problems he has uncovered in Scottish rugby, through research over recent months, and is continuing a process of inviting comments on others.

However, he does have a plan and at its heart is to improve the marketing and attraction of the professional teams, alongside work with club rugby, schools and youth rugby and improving relations with broadcasters and sponsors. The last-named is crucial. He admitted that he cannot see an imminent return for Scotland to three professional teams, due to lack of finance, but does believe that sponsors are out there willing to invest in the game, notably to help keep internationalists in Scotland and attract world-class talents to Scotland.

“It is about how you sell what we have in Scottish rugby to people,” he said. “The SRU is not in financial trouble but it is not awash with cash either and we have to bring new revenues and sponsors.

“You have to bring revenue in and get sponsors on your side to help you keep our best players at Glasgow and Edinburgh and bring others in, and you have to be in bed with them in real partnerships. But we can say to them ‘if I bring better players to this club then you benefit; there’s a halo effect for you. The better the player the more marketable he is, the more personal appearances he can do for you and your brand, the better the brand halo effect is’.

“You have to be direct with sponsors and say ‘you’re helping me bring these players in to make the club better to make your sponsorship go further’. We have to be sponsorship-friendly and smart about how our sponsorship family is created.

“I’m talking about this at a local level with say Glasgow-only sponsors who might want to put £20,000 or £30,000 in [some such offers were turned away by McKie], medium sponsors who might want to put £150,000/£200,000 in and core sponsors who want to put millions of pounds in.

“The message is the same to them all. We can make your £50,000 go a lot further if we have Xavier Rush, Johann Muller or Jerome Kaino in the team. Why wouldn’t you want to be associated with that, rather than some really good up-and-coming lad that you haven’t heard of?”

Dodson has much work ahead and he worked hard in a media briefing yesterday to spread his enthusias m, but was realistic when faced with reporters’ concerns at having heard all of this before, several times, without any significant change to the pro teams’ standing in Scottish or European rugby.

The very fact that he knew names of top world players was a step forward on his predecessor and provides a tiny glimpse into what Sir Moir, McLauchlan and the other members of the interview panel saw when they hired the Englishman. However, success with results will be as stark for him as they are for Robinson’s team.

Dodson faces a tough baptism and a short honeymoon period, taking up the reins as concerns grow around a national squad still promising much but delivering little and looking to an incredibly tough Six Nations schedule round the corner.

It kicks off in February with an early rematch of Saturday’s agonising game with England, this time at Murrayfield, before they head to the Millenium Stadium to face Wales, return home to host France and then finish with two away games in Dublin and Rome.

But Dodson comes across as a genial rugby man with a passion, and more importantly a plan. There are aspects still to find some basis in reality, such as his hope to make rugby the preferred sport in most Scottish schools, but at this stage it would be wrong to knock his ambition.

He acknowledges where Scottish rugby is and how much the game has struggled, sympathising as a long-time rugby player and club man, but bringing a business head to how it can be turned around. Fundamentally, he has deep experience and knowledge of the media, and how to sell sport to the media, and understanding of the necessity to provide a game and teams that people want to support, rather than simply expecting or demanding that support. “It’s like anything else that is struggling. What do you do? Roll over and die or just reinvent yourself? You reinvent yourself with a new spin on what you do. You keep on thinking, but there hasn’t been that level of marketing opportunity in the SRU that I’ve been used to wherever else that I’ve been. I’m used to fighting and arm-wrestling for every pound and creating inventory to sell, not protecting inventory you can’t sell.

“I can’t be an apologist for everything that has gone before, but sometimes the real benefit of someone like me coming into an organisation like this is that I am not attached to anybody; I have no history and am not an Edinburgh man or a Glasgow man, and not even a Scot. I walk through the door and am here to do the very best for Scottish rugby and have a plan to deliver it in short order.

“This is a new start for Scottish rugby as far as I’m concerned.”

He added that there would also be new levels of accountability within the SRU, with plans to drive marketing, sponsorship and the spectator experience among his priorities. Indicating further an awareness of past problems within Murrayfield, Dodson added: “Everyone in this organisation is going to be accountable. If I fail in this mission I should go. I know that. My job is to make sure that we give everybody the best chance to do their job and to liberate them to do it. With that comes key performance indicators and if you don’t match up to the key performance indicators it’s the same as any other business; you have to get someone else in who can. With this fresh start will come a different view.

“Nobody has to be frightened of this job at all. There are incredibly good people in the SRU. But everybody is going to have to perform, on and off the field, and that includes me.”