HARD HITTING VIEW
2020 will be a year that no one will forget in a hurry.
Writing a preview of the year 12 months ago, few could have imagined the turmoil that the world would endure on so many fronts.
Sport in general has been impacted massively by the pandemic and there are fears that it will not recover quickly.
When the dust settles, and life returns to some degree of normality, questions will have to be asked about whether those governing the game, at home and globally, did enough, fast enough, to protect and preserve it.
In Scotland, Mark Dodson and his colleagues at Murrayfield did not cover themselves in glory by any stretch of the imagination and, for many, there is still a lack of confidence in the CEO.
Dodson was under the microscope from many quarters when he pocketed his obscene bonus – granted, it was not of his making, the SRU remuneration committee have to shoulder the responsibility for that.
But he became the best-rewarded CEO of a sporting governing body by some distance and many resented that fact.
When the pandemic began to impact the game of rugby, Dodson failed to lead by example as many others had in both rugby and other sports.
‘ It was a messy way to deal with the onset of the crisis
Murrayfield were always going to be challenged in this environment, as the burden of Glasgow and Edinburgh’s player salaries fall at their door in contrast to many other countries.
Add to that the commitment to Dodson’s Agenda 3 project, as well as the army of SRU employees, then a summer without tours or TV revenue and autumn internationals with no crowds was going to be painful for rugby.
And that is before you consider how the grass roots of the game were impacted during the year.
At the start of the pandemic, many businesses acted quickly and decisively. Not the SRU.
They cut wages of players without appropriate consultation and, in the early part of their crisis response, decided to defer the salaries of the executives, before back-tracking and making the deferments cuts.
It was a messy way to deal with the onset of the greatest crisis to affect the professional game and a stark contrast to other Unions. The question is whether Dodson and his colleagues have learned from the crisis.
The recent bailout by the Scottish Government is a huge fillip for the game, but it will be interesting to see how much of that filters down through the layers to clubland, where the impact is every bit as serious.
Covid could have been handled better in Scottish rugby – of that there is no doubt. But at least the game is still going and here’s hoping that 2021 enables rugby to heal properly, along with the rest of the world.