Allan Massie: Mark Dodson’s odd remark about Townsend’s future is added to his list of misjudgements

Often at this time of the year, I have written about the Melrose Sevens and the enduring support for the Sevens season in the Borders.

Scottish Rugby chief executive Mark Dodson with captain Jamie Ritchie.

Alternatively this week, I might have dwelled on Glasgow’s European Challenge Cup match against the Lions.

However, one cannot get away from it. The most remarkable rugby event of this week was the extraordinary statement from the SRU chief executive, Mark Dodson, about the future of Scotland’s head coach Gregor Townsend, and this was really very odd.

Dodson said Townsend’s contract may be renewed, but he also revealed he has been searching the world for a replacement, and sounding other coaches about their possible interest in the job. He even named one of them – the current coach of Auckland Blues.

The question is apparently whether Townsend or any successor can promise to break through the “Glass Ceiling” and take Scotland to the top. Well, it should not be news to Mr Dodson, or indeed to anyone who knows how things stand today, that this will be bloody hard for any coach, perhaps even impossible.

In terms of organisation and resources, we are a long way behind Ireland and France, and it is to the credit of Townsend, his fellow coaches and players that we can even run them close.

Many responses to Dodson’s words on social media have been blunt: it is not Townsend who should go; it’s Dodson.

Dodson has been chief executive of the SRU for more than 10 years. In one way at least, he has been a great success. The SRU is no longer in a parlous financial position, as it was for the first 15 or so years of the professional era. Some 20 years ago, things were so desperate that the third professional club, the Border Reivers, was abruptly and deplorably closed down. Things are different now and the SRU press releases regularly boast of new commercial deals. We may thank Dodson’s stewardship for this and be grateful especially when we look at the dire state of the professional game in Wales.

In other ways, his tenure of office has been less happy. At the last World Cup, he threatened World Rugby with legal action when a typhoon resulting in some deaths and much destruction made it seem the Scotland match against Japan might have to be called off or moved elsewhere. His intemperate outburst was ill-received and did nothing for our reputation.

Then there is the sad case of Siobhan Cattigan, the young star of our women’s international side. It is claimed that neither Siobhan, nor her parents received the help and support from the SRU which they should have had. Then the SRU refused the parents’ request for an independent inquiry into the circumstances of her decline and death and Dodson reportedly postponed a meeting with the parents’ representative. All this has, at the very least, left a nasty taste in the mouth.

These may be isolated examples of misjudgment. There has, however, been another persistent failure on Dodson’s watch. While the national team under Townsend’s stewardship has performed well and has, if one is honest, actually achieved rather more than we could reasonably expect, the SRU’s record with regard to the development of age-group rugby and the passage to the professional game has been an abject failure, in comparison not only with Ireland, but more recently Italy too. It is fair to say that in the 10 years that Dodson has been chief executive and therefore the man on whom ultimate responsibility rests, there has been no improvement in this important area. Watching this spring’s under-20 internationals one could only feel sorry for the boys. The gulf between them and Ireland, Italy too, was so vast and deep.

Dodson is not, of course, personally responsible for failure in any particular match or tournament. But he is ultimately responsible for the structure and this structure is flimsy, even broken. He is ultimately responsible for the general health of the game on the field and this is in a bad way. When he eventually goes, he will deserve thanks for leaving the SRU in good financial health, but when it comes to the future of the next generation of young players and the game on the field, it looks as if it will be a very different story and his stewardship will be remembered as a sad failure.