Old guard suffers setback as vote supports museum

ON A DAY of changing mood music in Scottish rugby, nowhere was the shift more evident than in the defeat of finance director Eamon Hegarty through the motion for a museum.

Hegarty provided clear evidence to Saturday's AGM that his directorship continues to save Scottish rugby money, but his handling of the game's history brought withering criticism of, and ultimately a heavy defeat, for the union.

The long-time business partner of Gordon McKie, the CEO who quit Murrayfield two weeks ago, Hegarty remains in place, but with an ever-shrinking number of allies.

In debating the motion for the return of a Scottish Rugby Museum, Mike O'Reilly, a member of the Orkney club and former SRU librarian, revealed that Hegarty had recently ordered the vast array of Scottish rugby artefacts, from jerseys and flags to famous match balls and unique trophies and gifts, be sent to a storage facility away from Murrayfield.

He also revealed an embarrassing last-minute attempt by the SRU to persuade the clubs to vote against the motion by having glass cases installed just two days before the AGM in an effort to demonstrate that they were moving on promises to show Scottish rugby's heritage.

George Russell, the 81-year-old president of Moray House RFC, brought the motion after repeated requests for support to restore the museum in which he once worked, and which was bulldozed by the West Stand refurbishment in 1993, had been met with agreement by Allan Munro, the SRU chairman, but no action.

Munro stated that there was no money available for a museum, but insisted new glass cases would be erected throughout Murrayfield suites to show off artefacts, ignoring the fact that these suites were largely off-limits to the public.

Hegarty lit the touch-paper on Saturday when he spoke against the motion in his finance report, long before the motion came up, and Bill Nolan, a former board member and now IRB rep, only stoked more resentment when he spoke against the motion when it was called.

Russell, however, presented a very persuasive argument, backed superbly and bluntly by O'Reilly, to the extent that concerns at the motion's demand for 250,000 to be set aside for the museum's creation, and within six months, were dispatched.

A rugby museum will now be planned and could become a legacy to the day when a feel for rugby regained the upper hand in Murrayfield over the grip of an accountant. O'Reilly, a former detective with Lothian and Borders Police Force, acknowledged the resistance from McKie and Hegarty as being typical of that duo's problems in leading Scottish rugby.

"I'm delighted with the decision," he said. "It was patently obvious that Murrayfield was going in a direction that wasn't beneficial to rugby. The man who was driving the closure and all the changes was Eamon Hegarty, but no doubt the chief executive was in the background.

"The businessmen when they arrived did an excellent job and we have a lot to thank them for, but for actually running the day-to-day business of a national sport's governing body, they were probably not the right people."