McKie refuses to back down

WHEN SRU chief executive Gordon McKie launched his outspoken attack on the BBC during the week, he did so knowing that the Scottish Parliament will debate the very issue of the Corporation's treatment of rugby in Scotland on Thursday.

The criticism of the BBC's "derisory" offer to cover the Autumn tests, as McKie called it, caught the headlines, diverting attention from some good news delivered by McKie. For instance, he revealed to Scotland on Sunday that the "family silver", namely the land around Murrayfield, is no longer up for grabs in property deals.

The SRU would also now be "very surprised and extremely disappointed," in McKie's words, if the Commonwealth Games Council for Scotland did not take a Scottish sevens squad to Delhi this autumn, as has previously been threatened.

"We want to put together a credible squad that can go to Delhi with the chance of bringing back a medal," said McKie, though he admitted that big name players are unlikely to be selected as the IRB protocol on players being freed for international selection does not cover the Games.

The BBC row simmers on, however, with McKie not backing down at all: "This is supposed to be the Decade of Sport, and the Government needs all sports to receive coverage to promote sport so that people want to play it.

"We feel that the coverage is overly biased towards football, notwithstanding that football is our national sport, and what we are asking for is a resetting of the coverage to promote other sports, including rugby."

For its part, the BBC felt slighted, having just shown the successful Tests in Argentina, for which the audiences were tiny – eight times more people in Scotland watched England versus the USA in the World Cup than watched the first Test in Argentina, and nearly four times as many people watched Cameroon v Denmark as watched the second Test.

The BBC were most angry about the word "derisory". They point out that until this year, the Autumn Tests involving Wales, Scotland and Ireland were sold on a collective bargaining basis by the three unions, but for whatever reason that is no longer the case.

BBC Scotland Head of Sport Ewan Angus said: "They chose to break up that position which delivered a sensible and coherent approach to the scheduling of those matches, and now that it has broken up, everybody wants to put their match on at a time which suits best for their audience. That in itself makes the Autumn Tests slightly less valuable."

The BBC still wants to show the Autumn Tests, though Angus said: "We make no secret of the fact that when it comes to sport, what we have to do is to reflect the tastes and interests of the audience, and you can't escape the fact that in Scotland, football is the biggest game in town by a country mile.

"We do place a lot of emphasis on rugby and we absolutely agree that there is a significant interest in rugby on the part of the audience, but we can only do so much and we do operate across three platforms – online, radio and television.

"At the moment we have a regularly scheduled rugby programme on Friday night on Radio Scotland which includes a live commentary almost every week. But we put a lot of emphasis on the Six Nations because rugby, whether the SRU like it or not, it is much more a big event sport than say, football."

Angus is hoist by his own petard, however, about 'reflecting tastes' because in terms of audience participation, Scotland's third and fourth biggest team sports, cricket and hockey, get barely a showing on BBC Scotland. The third biggest spectator sport – horse racing – has not been covered live on television by BBC Scotland in decades.

Sports such as athletics, shinty and curling are covered, but never one of the most popular sports on television – boxing, which Angus admits has not been shown in anything other than documentaries by BBC Scotland for many years.

Promoter Frank Warren detests the way the BBC treats the sport: "You have people high up in the BBC who just don't like boxing. They are supposed to be giving the people what they want and all you have to do is look at the numbers of people who watched boxing when it was on the BBC and ITV – they were phenomenal numbers. Boxing is a majority sport, but whether it's a leftie thing or some sort of social agenda, the BBC seem to think boxing is nasty and they don't want to touch it."

Angus refuted that last suggestion and replied: "Boxing is quite a good example of a sport that didn't do itself any favours by establishing so many regulatory bodies and having a period of time when mismatched bouts were more the norm than the exception. There are issues about boxing's place in society, but it's nothing to do with elitism or class."

The arguments which underlie this debate centre more on money – Gordon McKie and Frank Warren want more broadcasting because it means more income in the long run. The BBC is also facing huge budget restrictions and should be honest about that – for instance, not one single extra penny has yet been allocated to the showing of more live sport in Scotland in the run up to Glasgow 2014.

As we get nearer to 2014, the Scottish Government and the broadcasters, especially the BBC, must get together to ensure that more sports, especially sports in which Scotland will be competing in Glasgow, are shown live or at least in the form of highlights.

Football is king, but Scotland will never win a gold medal at any Olympic or Commonwealth Games for that sport. Thursday's Parliamentary debate is timely but should not just be about the BBC and rugby, it should be about the broadcasting of all sport in Scotland.