When Scottish rugby stared into the abyss
Plenty of fireworks but SRU’s lack of focus left our struggling game stuck firmly in the mud
HE WAS the bright new kid from CocaCola who would change the face of professional rugby in Scotland and still, 16 years on from his arrival, Phil Anderton is a man bursting with ideas.
Speaking to Sportsmail in a pub in Stockbridge, within sight of piles of old stones as work continues on the rebuilding of Edinburgh Accies’ historic Raeburn Place ground, Anderton oozes enthusiasm on the subject of Scottish rugby. His hands are constantly moving, his tone rising and falling as he recalls the adventure which began in the year 2000.
A new century dawned and Scottish rugby was struggling with the transition from amateur to professional sport. Bill Watson, who took over from legendary SRU secretary Bill Hogg as the first real chief executive, fought a successful defence of a case brought by a handful of clubs with the Office of Fair Trading, accusing the SRU of breaking monopolies law by running district ‘super teams’.
Their plan was to have the district teams disbanded and clubs like Edinburgh Accies, Melrose and Glasgow Hawks instead handed a few million pounds and entered into the European Cup.
The OFT found in the SRU’s favour in 2002 and the SRU expanded the professional base by adding to Edinburgh and Glasgow with a relaunched Borders Reivers team under ex-All Blacks coach Tony Gilbert and with the talismanic Gary Armstrong and Gregor Townsend back in the rugby heartland.
Still, however, Watson faced ongoing public and personal attacks as the SRU’s debt rose with an extra 40 players and the withdrawal of the new broadcast revenues earmarked to fund the Borders — when Sky quit the Six Nations bidding, allowing the BBC to drop the price. Add to that the loss of £5million in autumn Test ticket sales due to the World Cup and damaging headlines around Scotland’s performances in Australia, and Watson’s time was up in December 2003.
Anderton, the thirtysomething from Coca-Cola lighting up Murrayfield with fireworks and a new bass beat, was promoted by chairman David Mackay and the board into the hotseat.
It was a new era entirely as director of rugby Jim Telfer retired and Ian McGeechan took over, and Australian Matt Williams and Irishman Willie Anderson replaced McGeechan and Telfer at the Scotland team helm.
On the field, it did not go well. Scotland slumped to a first Six Nations whitewash and claimed just three wins — over Samoa, Japan and Italy — in 17 Tests under Williams and Anderson. That led to a player revolt with the likes of Gordon Bulloch, Tom Smith and Nathan Hines retiring before the coaches were sacked.
Off the field, Anderton tackled the area he knew best and, doubling the marketing budget from £400,000 to £800,000, attracted record autumn Test crowds to Murrayfield.
New sponsorship deals widened the message that Scottish rugby was attractive and open to all with an STV deal bringing Scottish club rugby back on TV every week in a programme advertising Scotland matches. Anderton (below) increased Murrayfield’s top West Stand ticket prices from £35 to £65, and dropped others from £35 to under £20, with children half-price, and his team ramped up matchday entertainment from back pitch attractions, food and bars to stadium music, radio announcers, on-pitch competitions and fireworks. The figures looked good but the committee were growing concerned that Anderton was racking up new costs and also losing touch with the grassroots and Scottish rugby traditions. ‘I saw notes to that effect in minutes from meetings,’ revealed Anderton, ‘and it was tough. ‘Lord Mackay went as far as he could politically in a new governance structure with the old committee overseeing policy and a new executive board filled with business expertise responsible for strategy and tactics. But one man’s policy is another man’s strategy, and we ended up with a double-headed monster.
‘I wasn’t there when it was decided we’d go down the district route but looking from outside, while the decision might have been right by taking 100 or so of Scotland’s best players into new teams, it ripped the heart out of the clubs overnight.
‘When I took over as CEO, the SRU was not a strong brand. We had financial challenges, a Scotland team losing regularly and three under-funded teams. The pro game was state-controlled and focused on bringing through as many home-bred players and coaches as possible, while clubs wanted nothing to do with the pro teams.
‘There was no commercial attraction either. Of course we had to develop Scottish players and coaches but we were spreading the butter too thin to be competitive.
‘My belief was that the answer to the lack of pro opportunities for players is not to create more pro teams in Scotland but to improve the attraction and quality of what we can afford, at all levels, and let players go to properly funded pro set-ups wherever they may be around the world — as guys like Gregor Townsend, Andy Nicol and Jason White did successfully.
‘Our plan was to do that with just two professional teams — which happened after we left. But, alongside that, David and I were speaking to businessmen from Scotland, across the UK, even the US and South Africa, about investing in the pro teams.
‘I didn’t think it was beyond the wit of man to come up with a franchise system where the new owner had control of the team and got the competition revenues but we set the terms of business, decide which competitions we play in, number of Scotland players etc and incentivise them to develop Scotland players. That’s the way the RFU do it in England, and is not dissimilar to the franchising we did with global tennis tournaments when I moved on to the ATP.’
As he says, Anderton’s plans came to nought and he moved on in early 2005. A powerful element within the general committee grew frustrated with the direction being taken by the chief executive, Mackay and the board, and felt they had lost control. In January 2005, a delegated trio met Mackay at his Fife home and demanded the chairman’s resignation.
He went, sending shockwaves through Scottish rugby once again with three board members, and
Anderton, and later McGeechan following, leaving Scottish rugby rudderless.
After a few months when the old guard of committee men stepped into the breach to try to pull a new board together, Gordon McKie was appointed in August 2005, and he states now that he ‘subsequently transformed and improved the running of what had become a badly run, poorly managed and under-performing organisation which was close to insolvency after many years of losses, poor governance and political in-fighting’.
Anderton disputes much of that, and McKie did follow Anderton’s lead in creating a unitary board and trying the franchise idea. The new man, a specialist in re-financing and turning around failing businesses, did not have faith in Anderton’s millionaire and billionaire sources, and instead handed Edinburgh to the Scottish Carruthers brothers — Alex a former pro player and coach, and Bob, a film producer heading a consortium of financiers.
That deal in the summer of 2006 handed the Borders a stay of execution, and the signing of Australia legend Steve Larkham looked set to drive up interest in Edinburgh in 2007, but that aborted move was symptomatic of a year of fighting between the new owners and McKie over the SRU’s financial contributions, and led to a bitter and costly divorce inside a year as Edinburgh came back under SRU control.
Intriguingly, the SRU had brought
on board Brian Kennedy, the Scottish businessman whose bid to take on Edinburgh in 1999 was rejected by the SRU, and who went on instead to buy Sale and turn them into an English powerhouse.
The millionaire entrepreneur, who sat on the board from 2005 to 2008, admits that then was not the right time and while McKie significantly reduced Scottish rugby’s overheads over the next six years, he left in 2011 with professional rugby and the national team still struggling to be competitive across the game.
‘In 2005, we believed that there was a real prospect of Scottish rugby going bust if it continued down the track it was going,’ said Kennedy, now no longer involved in rugby. ‘I understand people had problems with Gordon (McKie), but I will always defend the fact that he saved Scottish rugby from financial meltdown.
‘Now it’s different. Mark Dodson took over from Gordon in 2011 and seems to be doing a good job of moving it on, and if the SRU are spending £10m-plus a year on professional rugby now then I’d strongly suspect that, if you could get the guys with the right ability, working within rules that makes it right for Scottish rugby, you would end up with a stronger game in Scotland.’
That has been the challenge for Scottish rugby for the past 20 years and remains key to its future now. Tomorrow, we speak to leading Scotland players on the past 20 years and where professional rugby in Scotland goes now.