New SRU chairman needs a touch of the Domniavelli
THE news that John Jeffrey has been appointed chairman and non-executive director of the Scottish Rugby Union is to be greatly welcomed, but unfortunately for him that means people like me will be offering our advice on what he should do in the job.
Immediately replacing Colin Grassie, whose performance had been ‘mixed’ to put it nicely, Jeffrey is taking over the role on an interim basis until the board make a fulltime appointment, probably next year.
I yield to no one in my admiration for Jeffrey as a player. He was one of the key men who won us the Grand Slam in 1990, the year after the Great White Shark was robbed of a full Lions test place in Australia because the English blindside flanker Mike Teague was in the form of his life and England-style mauls were preferred to Scottish rucking.
Since his playing days, the Borders farmer has become one of the most respected figures in the administration side of the sport.
I recall when he was coopted onto the Scottish Rugby Council 10 years ago, and was then the Scottish representative on what was then the IRB and is now World Rugby. He’s been on its Executive Committee since 2016 and is chairman of its Rugby Committee, as well as being a ‘designated member for clarifications in law’, whatever that is.
His appointment last July as chairman of the Six Nations council for a three-year term has put him in charge of the organisation at a crucial time for its development, and the same could be said of his new chairmanship – only at this time of coronavirus, it’s an issue of survival never mind progress.
Bearing that in mind, it’s good that JJ, as he was known in his playing days, is nobody’s fool and as well as his leadership qualities he can play the rugby politics game as shrewdly as anyone. It’s that latter quality that may be most needed in months to come, and JJ will be well aware that the crew of the good ship SRU is not a united grouping at the moment – there’s been a feeling of Murrayfield v the Rest for a long time, now, and I suspect John Jeffrey is one of the very few men who can examine the situation, come up with a sensible plan for going forward, and then implement it.
He will meet resistance in some quarters, but he has to have a touch of the Dominic Cummings about him – not the crassly insane bit that treats the populace with disdain, but the Machiavellian aspect of Cummings who whether you like him or not, delivered a Leave vote in 2016 and a Johnson-Tory win at the last general election by concentrating on simple, albeit mendacious, messages to the electorate. (That’s why I’ve nicknamed Cummings the Domniavelli, though he looks to have done a Bill Clinton and escaped from a scandal that would normally have seen him defenestrated.)