Scotland’s pro rugby players to stay on furlough but training return edges closer

Target is limited practice at Murrayfield on 22 June

Edinburgh head coach Richard Cockerill may soon have the chance to get his players on the training pitch. Picture: Paul Devlin/SNS/SRU

As the slow inching out of lockdown process continues, SRU chief executive Mark Dodson confirmed that the country’s professional players will remain furloughed for the time being despite the hoped-for return to limited and restricted training at BT Murrayfield on 22 June.

All of Scotland’s contracted players, as well as the vast majority of coaching, support and office staff, have been on the UK government’s job retention scheme, which pays 80 per cent of salaries, since it was introduced and it has now been extended to October, with an expectation that employers will start to contribute more.

“The first thing to understand is this is an invitation to players to come back,” explained Dodson. “We’re basically getting the players back to effectively work to get themselves rugby fit before they can start what we would class as normal training.

“As far as we’re concerned the guys are coming back, they’ll be doing some running and gym work: this is not normal training as you would know it. Effectively this is the first stage back to getting them into the normal training environment.

“We’ve taken soundings from HMRC and they’re very comfortable with this approach of voluntary training, an invitation to train. Probably not all of our players will come in one group into BT Murrayfield at this stage.

“The fact of the matter is this is our first step on the way to getting our players fit, because as James Robson said, this is the longest period of deconditioning ever for some of these players, so we’re going to have to get them back aerobically fit and take our time to get them back into condition.”

Dodson said he was hopeful that the Guinness Pro14 can be finished with an advance to a play-off stage which would involve both Edinburgh and Glasgow but that would be a decision for the Pro14 as a whole and was at the “start of a process”.

Below the professional tier, Dodson is acutely aware that the current crisis and rugby shutdown presents huge challenges for the club game and confirmed that the £500,000 hardship fund was set to roll out.

“In all 82 clubs have received awards and we have written to them to inform them what they are getting,” he said. “The response has been excellent.

“People are generally delighted with the responses they’ve got. We will be making an announcement next week about what goes where and what the values were. You will get that all next week from [domestic rugby head] Sheila [Begbie].”

Dodson conceded that resumption of rugby activity at the lower levels does provide greater problems.

“Most of the clubs have taken the view of trying to mothball themselves until they’ve actually got more information,” he said. “Other clubs are more keen to get started and feel they want to get started as soon as possible.

“As it stands at the moment, there is no provision within the advice from Scottish rugby regarding when we can start to resume rugby.

“Our intention is to do whatever we can as soon as we can and as safely as we can. The message from us is that when we can get the game resumed then we will do that and we will do it as speedily as we possibly can.

“The clubs have the same problem as us: they have expenditure, but no income. We have tried to help them with expenditure through accelerated payments and the club hardship fund so they can keep the lights on and maintain the fabric of the clubs involved. We all have the same problem and we all share the pain so we will be working very hard to try to resume as soon as it is practical and safe to do so.”

That resumption at some point is vital to the sport’s survival. The Irish union has been quoted as saying its cash reserves would dry up in a matter of months if nothing gets going in that time and Dodson said the SRU was in the same boat. “Scottish rugby’s money will definitely run out and it’s about how we refinance ourselves to get across the bridge from where we are now to when the virus abates,” he said. Dodson added that redundancies were not inevitable but may have to be looked at.

“It is not something we want to rush at,” he said. “These are people who have worked with us for a long time and they are highly skilled individuals.”

The Scotland Women’s team lost three of their Six Nations games to the pandemic and were due to play 2021 World Cup qualifiers in August and September.

“It’s top of our agenda and they were disrupted quite badly because of Covid,” said Dodson. “We’re working with World Rugby and Six Nations now to get a coherent path for them to come back together.”

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