Sir Bill Gammell and Norman Murray’s Scottish rugby governance review is published

Euan Kennedy, Finlay Calder, Sir Bill Gammell and Norman Murray present the governance report at Murrayfield yesterday. Picture: Paul Devlin/SNS/SRU

The 25-page report – commissioned by an SRU committee and officially titled “Independent Corporate Governance And Business Review of the Scottish Rugby Union” – recommends far-reaching changes to the structure of the governing body and to the appointment of officials.

It has the backing of senior executives within Murrayfield, but several club representatives have already expressed concern about some of its recommendations.

The report’s proposals include the abolition of the SRU Council and the SRU Trust – the latter being the body which, since 1911, has held the SRU’s key assets, including Murrayfield itself – and the establishment at the top of the structure of New Scottish Rugby Union Ltd.

That company which will be responsible for “allocation of capital and resources”, according to the report.

SRU Ltd would operate below the new company, and, below that, there would be a division between a Rugby Development Board (responsible for domestic and community game) and a Professional Performance Board (“responsible for professional, Super 6, Academies and international game).

The latter body would be populated by key existing personnel such as the chief executive, chief operating officer, national coaches for both men’s and women’s teams and the Super6 director, while the Rugby Development Board would include “an independent chair, the SRU Director of Rugby Development, up to two SRU appointees and six independent members nominated from the domestic game, with the RDB having the ability to appoint up to two further independent members.”

Those two new bodies, according to the report, “should dramatically increase the efficiency, accountability and skillset within Scottish Rugby”. The proposed new structure as a whole, meanwhile, “provides a simplified, rationalised and modern governance structure where the ultimate body responsible for the management of Scottish Rugby is directly accountable to member clubs, through legal rights as members of New SRU, removing the dual filter of the Council and the SRU Trust that currently sits between member clubs and management”.

The report was commissioned in the wake of the Keith Russell affair last year, in which the SRU was found to have unfairly dismissed its director of domestic rugby. However, rather than focusing on that episode and how it arose, Gammell and Murray, respectively the founder and former chairman of Cairn Energy plc, have concentrated on how to make the game, as they see it, more professional. The priority, they believe, is to introduce a structure that enables the SRU to deal as efficiently as possible with the foreseen new investment in the game from companies such as CVC Capital Partners, the body which has already bid for a stake in the Six Nations and the PRO14.

The emphasis on professionalism, however, at times appears to be at the expense of traditional democratic representation. In some cases, for example, clubs can nominate directors, but it will be down to the already existing office-bearers to choose which nominees take up office. The abolition of the Trust is also likely to cause disquiet given its reputation as a body committed to upholding the long-term interests of the sport, as is the concentration of power in the hands of some of those who were responsible for the mistreatment of Russell.

Gammell will now hold at least one open forum for club representatives. There will then be two special general meetings, the first of which is expected to have a simple yes-or-no vote on the report in its entirety. At the second, a two-thirds majority will be needed if the transfer of shareholding in Scottish Rugby Ltd to New SRU is to go through. If approved by the membership, full implementation is envisaged to be feasible by the end of May 2020.