Super 6 puts SRU history in the shade

The Scottish Rugby Union will make history this morning when it ratifies the election of its first-ever female president as Dee Bradbury of Oban Lorne RFC takes on the role for a two-year stint.

In recent years, when the SRU’S Annual General Meeting has been a fairly calm affair, that moment, even though it has been in the pipeline since 2016 when Bradbury was elected vice-president, would have created the headlines as she becomes the first woman to preside over a tier-one rugby nation’s union.

However, this year’s gathering at BT Murrayfield is poised to be a more heated one as the fall-out from the launch of the new Super 6 part-time professional league continues.

The ramifications of the set-up are the subject of two motions for debate.

The Super 6 – involving winning franchises from Ayr, Heriot’s, Watsonians, Boroughmuir, Melrose and Stirling County – will go ahead the season after next but the issues up for debate today regard the knock-on effects as part of the wider Agenda 3 project, which aims to revamp the club game in Scotland.

The first motion, proposed by Aberdeen Grammar, will involve discussion of the plan to make all

domestic rugby below Super 6 level strictly amateur. The second, proposed by Haddington, argues for a change in the bye-laws in relation to the approval process for changes to the structure of national club competitions.

This regards the plan for the second XVS of the Super 6 franchises to be placed in the second tier of the new domestic league system and seeks to assert the clubs’ right to be in control of how competitions are structured.

The AGM takes place against a backdrop of vocal criticism in some quarters of chief executive Mark Dodson’s entire Super 6 strategy, but this morning offers an opportunity for the clubs themselves to formally express their views in an open forum on the situation.

Other business will see an election for the vice-presidency, with Ian Barr (Lasswade), Jim Littlefair (North Berwick), Graham Low (Gala) and Mike Monro (Aberdeenshire) standing for the post.

The formal business of the meeting will end with the ratification as president of Bradbury, who is a retired police officer.

She has represented Scotland and Great Britain in athletics as well as playing representative netball and managed the Scotland U18 women’s team.

Already the SRU’S representative to Rugby Europe, Bradbury is married with two sons, one of whom is the Edinburgh and Scotland back-row forward Magnus Bradbury.