As Scotland stepped up to the challenge of the Rugby League Four Nations, their chairman Keith Hogg was thrilled by the ingenuity shown by some of their support staff.
It is Hogg’s job to ensure that the players are properly looked after, that the books balance and, as you can read about elsewhere in HeraldSport today, that there are plans to take the sport forward.
However with the inevitable injury count resulting in a variety of scans to be undergone without recourse to the NHS - cost around £475 a time - he was delighted to discover that the team’s medics had gone into barter mode, using signed jerseys as currency.
“To be honest I was pleased on both counts because it also demonstrated that our shirts have acquired some value,” he pointed out.
Receiving the following message from supporter Graham Forbes was a further bonus.
“I attended Friday evening’s match with my wife and son,” it read.
“We went in the hospitality. After the match my mother came to up pick my son so my wife and myself could have a few drinks. When we went outside the Scotland bus was there. I approached the bus and Steve McCormack (the team’s head coach) was at the top of the steps. Having had a few drinks and a bit of Dutch courage I asked him if my son could come on and get some photos and autographs. He was so obliging it was unbelievable. Every single player signed his book and had photos with him. Please could you pass my thanks on to Steve and all the players, they are a credit to rugby league. They made my son’s evening. Big congratulations by the way, what an evening.”
They are a wonderfully down to earth bunch, as exemplified by a couple of post-match observations from players at either end of the professional game following their historic draw with world number one New Zealand in Workington.
"The slogan that inspired the upset was ‘family and honesty’. Everyone in this squad is equal, whether they're NRL or Super League players or part-timers who train twice a week after work,” said Brett Phillips, a Workington player who had to take time off work to be part of the Scotland squad.
That could not have been better reinforced than by Kane Linnett, a hugely respected figure in the big money Australian NRL who was apparently an SRU target a year or two back.
“Family is everything,” he said.
“Family is the reason we know each other and it's what we play for.”
Some have sought to down-play their achievements because only a couple of them were born in Scotland. It was consequently uplifting to discover this week that those who better grasp the nature of the commitment of men who stand to gain little in fiscal terms, but want to give their all emotionally, include one Rod Cross, emeritus professor of economics at Strathclyde University apparently, who wrote to The Herald offering his analysis.
“The performance of the Scotland Rugby League (SRL) team in gaining a late -won 18-18 draw with the New Zealand Kiwis on November 11 was truly outstanding,” he wrote.
“Well done to the players, coaches and administrators. And well done to The Herald for providing excellent coverage of this great sporting achievement.
“Carpe diem. The work of the SRL at the grassroots levels in areas such as Easterhouse has been heroic - vide the Easterhouse Panthers. The idea of having an RL franchise team in Scotland makes sense, the grassroots supporting the national team. The door is open for philanthropists who like the cut of the jib of a great sport with community roots. The initial endowment could well yield a win-win, self-supporting, social enterprise.”
He is right. The commercial and social opportunity represented by this much more easily learned and organised version of rugby is something that would fit very well with any football club with an all-weather playing surface.
Well worth thinking about.
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And Another Thing…
A sport Scotland both invented and remains sufficiently good at that it is the only one in which medals were delivered in every discipline at the last Olympic/Paralympic cycle, makes curling pretty well unique.
With the Scottish challenge led by Eve Muirhead, already at 26 one of the most successful sportspeople Scotland has ever produced, the European Championships, which get underway at Braehead Arena this weekend and continue until the following one, should be a roaring success.
Since their skip is considered the best in Europe, if not the world, Team Muirhead will go into the women’s event among the favourites, while her older brother Glen is part of a men’s team that has connections with pretty much every corner of the Scottish mainland since. The Muirheads hail from Highland Perthshire, skip Tom Brewster runs Curl Aberdeen having grown up in Lockerbie, Hammy McMillan is from Stranraer and local boy Ross Paterson is a Glaswegian. They deserve the home support they are hoping for.
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