Sale of stake in professional clubs is in
Mark Dodson’s plan for external investment should be warmly welcomed as it would boost whole game, writes Stuart Bathgate
WHEN club representatives attend a special general meeting of the Scottish Rugby Union on Friday night, they might well be minded to ask what a motion proposing the sale of a stake in Glasgow Warriors or Edinburgh Rugby has to do with them.
The answer, according to Mark Dodson, the governing body’s chief executive, is that it has everything to do with them: that a move designed to strengthen the two professional teams will also fortify other parts of the sport.
“The domestic game is the lifeblood for all our stakeholders,” Dodson said. “They care about the game from grassroots right the way through to the age groups and academies, and right up to the international team.
“What we’re trying to say is if we don’t do something here o, ur finances are going to be strained on one side of the business or the other. And if we fall behind in the pro and international game, it makes it a hell of a lot harder to invest the way we are in the domestic game.
“I’d hope they [the clubs] see this as their board and management coming to them, openly, transparently, and saying: ‘We’ve foreseen a problem here and are coming to you early to do something about it, to protect the domestic game. Will you allow us to do it?’ And I think they believe that that’s what we’re doing.”
Time will tell on that front, of course. As well as producing a resolution on the motion, the meeting will be an indication of just how sceptical clubs feel about the leadership of the sport – and perhaps also how neglected they feel.
The SRU will need the support of two-thirds of voting clubs for the motion, and it also requires at least 106 voters to attend for the meeting to be quorate. The motion, to be proposed by SRU President Rob Flockhart and chairman of the board Sir Moir Lockhead, states: “Subject always to the prior approval of the board of directors of Scottish Rugby Union plc [the ‘company’] and on such terms as the board of directors consider appropriate, that the company be and is authorised to dispose to a third party or parties, whether by sale