Keith Russell: I doubt SRU has learned lessons from review

Keith Russell, the SRU's former head of domestic rugby, fears the governing body has failed to learn lessons from the unfair dismissal case he won against the union.

Keith Russell, the SRU's former head of domestic rugby. Picture: SNS

Scottish Rugby released a lengthy statement on Friday following a review of the Russell affair. But Murrayfield did not publish the review, conducted by Lesley Thomson, former solicitor-general for Scotland and an independent member of the SRU board.

Russell branded the SRU “toxic” after he won his case.

The statement said that the governing body had learned lessons but Russell, pictured, doubts that is the case. In an interview with the BBC, Russell called the SRU’s statement “a lot of words and not much clarity and little or no indication that they’ve learned any lessons from this”.

He added: “The fact that they’ve issued a statement with a few recommendations rather than releasing the text of Lesley’s review is not unexpected but it’s disappointing.

“Lesley is an impressive person and it would be very interesting to see the review rather than just some vague recommendations that miss the point.

“Its first recommendation on how to improve the governance is about strengthening the human resource capability within Murrayfield, but in my case there was no failing on the part of the human resource team. It was a failing on the part of the chief executive [Mark Dodson], and the general council, who knew what the human resource process was telling them and then chose to ignore it.”