SRU chief backs Robinson and aims to keep best players in pro teams

AFTER witnessing Scotland’s desperate early exit from the Rugby World Cup at the weekend and fall to tenth in the world rankings, the Scottish Rugby Union’s new chief executive Mark Dodson admitted that the experience has steeled in him a desire to strengthen the professional teams by creating and signing box-office stars.

Dodson arrived in Auckland last week, in time for the final pool match with England at Eden Park that ended in a 16-12 defeat and failure to qualify for the quarter-finals for the first time in Scotland’s history. Combined with Tonga’s shock defeat of France, that dropped Scotland to tenth, their worst position since Andy Robinson took over from Frank Hadden in 2009.

Dodson, who started his new job only two weeks ago, stated swiftly that Robinson had his backing and that of the board to continue as Scotland’s head coach, and the former media boss remains optimistic about the new Murrayfield regime’s potential to improve Scottish rugby. A central tenet of that lies, he said, in a drive to improve the professional tier and significantly improve the quality and big-match experience of players coming through from the grassroots of the game all the way to the national squad.

Despite uplifting wins by Glasgow and Edinburgh in the RaboDirect Pro12 at the weekend, Dodson acknowledged: “The Scottish pro teams have been disappointing but we will make real improvements into their performance going forward. We are looking at all sorts of models to liberate the teams to improve their on and off-field performance. I have only been in the job two weeks but I have done an enormous amount of thinking about this over a long period of time.

“I’ve looked at different models, including the Irish model, and ways in which the clubs can move. There are not 17 different answers to this. There are only three or four, but we have to choose one of those and make sure we drive it forward and not change our course. We are a reactive organisation in that sense and we can’t be; we need to be a proactive organisation that sets a plan.

“The Irish didn’t do this overnight. The Leinster phenomenon and Munster phenomenon took several years to develop and Ulster are on that journey now. If they can do it there’s no reason why we can’t do it. There is nothing dysfunctional about Edinburgh and Glasgow as cities. They are fantastic cities with fantastic potential. What we have to do is choose a model that people and businesses will respond to and put the right product on the pitch.”

Key to that for the former Guardian media chief is the appeal of box-office rugby stars, whether they are created by keeping the cream of the current crop in Scotland or buying star quality in from abroad.

“The reasons that people leave is for money or to be competitive and win things elsewhere, and we’re not likely to win things from our own pro franchises,” he said of the current set-up. “But if we just took that as a position of defeat we might as well produce all Richie Grays and let them go, and become a conveyor belt for another league. I take the contrary view [to previous administration who encouraged players to leave] and I’ve said already that we have to make stars of our best players, make them figures in Scotland and role models for kids.

“If I went to a kid in comprehensive school in Aberdeen or Dundee he probably couldn’t name Scottish players. We want him not only to be able to name Richie Gray, but be able to name five or six other stars. So we have to create stars, build these guys as brands working with their agents, the union and sponsors to make sure these people are recognised. The reason people go to a rugby union match in England is because they see 30 international players and some of the best club rugby in the world. Here, because we haven’t made stars out of players it’s very difficult to name the XV even if you’re a fan and that’s not good.” He added: “You’ve got to try to keep our best players, not say off you go to Saracens or Toulouse, we’ve done our bit, and you can still play for Scotland so we haven’t lost you. Well, [if we do that] we’re never going to be competitive.

“We’re looking to get the best players so if we do lose a player like John Barclay we won’t take it as a cost saving. We will go out and try and buy a top-class South African, Englishman or Kiwi to come in and be a role model for the back row, second row, nines or tens, so that they can learn from them.”