Rugby: Aitken: Never say never for Murrayfield hot seat

The top job has fallen vacant with the resignation of McKie, as exclusively revealed on-line by the Evening News yesterday.

Successful businessman Aitken, an arch-critic of SRU policies since the game went professional in the mid-1990s and the man who led Scotland to a Five Nations clean sweep in 1984, said when asked if he might throw his hat into the ring: "I'm a bit old (63)... but you never know."

On the void created by McKie's departure after six years in charge during which the debt has been reduced from around 20million to 15m Aitken said: "There can be no knee-jerk reaction now. The situation has to be pondered carefully. We have to have the right people taking decisions and not anybody with a vested interest.

"The danger is the next person installed as the solution to the current situation will actually be someone who was partly responsible for the trouble Scottish rugby is in. For that reason the appointment has to be made by somebody with no axe to grind and no baggage.

"Above all it has to be someone with an interest in rugby because my concern regarding Gordon McKie was that he would be more comfortable looking on at Ibrox rather that Murrayfield - as I went on record as saying before the Calcutta Cup match with England earlier this year."

Aitken's fellow Scotland cap turned businessman, Norrie Rowan, echoed many of those views, saying: "The next Chief Executive has to be somebody with more empathy to club rugby.

"Gordon McKie did a great job when he came in ... and then allowed himself to be guided by people who got the game into the mess it's currently in. After getting the figures looking much better the result of some policies was that the game was being killed.

"In essence he lost touch with the customers by, for example, closing the car park on international days because picknicking outside the ground was a great tradition for many. That, and some other ideas, were the wrong way to treat fans.

"With a view to filling the post long term I'd be talking to rugby people with business acumen. Ian Barnes (former Hawick internationalist and top coach) comes to mind as somebody the SRU should now be talking to, at least for his viewpoint." Many believe the writing was on the wall for McKie when, in a recent interview, current president and former Scotland captain, Ian McLauchlan, said: "We have a lot of very good people at Murrayfield doing a very good job but you have to let the rugby people get on with running the rugby side of things.

"We need to build the rugby side of things and especially we need to strengthen Edinburgh and Glasgow. It's not all about money. We have to make the pro teams more meaningful until they dominate the game in Scotland because, if we lose any more interest, if we lose any more fans, people will rightly ask, 'why do we bother with the teams at all?'

"There is plenty we can do to promote the clubs and the first thing is to make them independent of the Union. They would still be financed by the SRU, just like every other professional club in Britain, but they would be free to go out and get sponsorship themselves, to get supporters and season ticket holders. They would cut their ties to the Union and work independently to build up interest or there is no point in having them."

Under McKie's stewardship a disastrous franchising agreement was entered into for the running of Edinburgh Rugby with the Carruthers brothers which brought the SRU's desire for controlling every aspect of the game into sharp relief at a time when autonomous rivals abroad were being bankrolled by multi-national companies.

Under those circumstances, many ask, is it ever likely Edinburgh or Glasgow could compete? Also, fans who have been asked to invest not only cash but also their emotions are rebelling against the concept of essentially feeder teams for Scotland with players constantly being kept back for the perceived bigger cash-generating occasion.

Another candidate whose name is being bandied around fans internet chatrooms today is deposed RFU chief executive John Steele, who has Caledonian ancestry although a former England B stand off.

Just days after being axed at Twickenham in a bewildering row over the way in which the post of Performance Director was advertised many believe London Scottish's director of rugby between 1995 and 1999 could be the ideal choice to eventually fill a post now being held down on a temporarily by board member Jock Millican, ex-international flanker and recent president of Heriot's.

Rod Lynch, president of London Scottish, believes a move for Steele would be well rewarded, saying: "John Steele is a first-class man. When he was at London Scottish I watched what he did and saw him as a very solid operator.

"When it comes to commenting on anything that ends in 'RU' just now I feel inclined to bite my tongue.

"But there is no doubt that Steele is a good operator, competent and straightforward.

"He was very successful previously with London Scottish."

When the exiles club were taken over they fell on hard financial times forcing Steele to move to Northampton where he helped them win the Heineken European Cup.

Lynch added: "John has had a spell in the military and has been chief executive of UK Sport. He is reliable and he's sensible.

"I'd be inclined to give this good guy a big thumbs-up."

As the hunt for a successor gets underway there will be recognition of how McKie reduced debt and that he may even have fallen between a rock and a hard place in terms of whether to keep supporting the Scottish professional teams described in a Welsh newspaper this week as "perennially-irrelevant" and "a lesson in what can happen when you create new professional entities ... passionless, mediocre, unloved and utterly synthetic" the mood for change was in the air?

David Smart, instigator of a social networking petition challenging the SRU said on Facebook today: "I don't know if we made a difference or not, but the world appears to be changing - maybe evidence of people power. Big thank you to all - let's keep the fingers crossed for a new (brighter) dawn."

Confirming Mr McKie's departure, the SRU issued a statement some two hours after the Evening News broke the story.