In the 20 years since rugby turned professional, there has been a growing sense of realisation that Scotland has fallen light years behind the game’s leading nations.
Today marks two decades since the last remnants of amateurism were removed from the game, and while the sport has grown enormously in that time, Scotland has found it tough to punch above its weight the way it used to in the amateur era.
Attempts to shape the game in this country have encountered difficulty: how to manage the professional teams (not least how many there should be), how to produce new talent and how to build a national team able to mount even a decent Six Nations challenge, far less compete on the world stage.
Some recent signs have pointed to an encouraging change in fortunes, however. Glasgow Warriors' victory in the PRO12 final last season was just reward for several seasons of sustained excellence under the hugely-impressive Gregor Townsend.
Edinburgh’s run to the European Challenge Cup final brought hope that they can break free of their inconsistencies and join Glasgow nearer the apex of the league table.
The Scottish Rugby Union’s four new academies spread around the country are designed to smooth the path for promising teenagers to advance through the ranks to make their mark at club and international level.
SRU chief executive Mark Dodson said recently that “this is the fourth time we’ve had a go at professionalism and the first three we got wrong”, but Chris Paterson believes this time is different.
“I think we’re on the right track,” Paterson said. “Glasgow’s success has underlined that. Edinburgh were really combative last year and I think they’ll be even better this year. The drive is to be consistent, and what we have in the set-up with Edinburgh and Glasgow, the younger players and the academies now taking shape is hopefully now a platform to make more players better and more consistent to allow us to succeed.”
The conundrum remains how to get the national team to rise above the monotony of the annual wooden-spoon battle with Italy and seriously threaten the Six Nations big guns. Paterson believes Scotland can and will improve, but feels there needs to be an acceptance of our standing in international rugby.
“It’s a different game isn’t it? It’s probably come further in the last maybe 10 or 12 [years] than it did in the first 8 or 9 [after professionalism]. It’s always changing, it’s always progressing.
“The international game is hard and I think historically since records began our win rate is about 40 per cent and that’s maybe where we are. Fifteen on 15 we can beat anyone on our day, we really can. Sometimes we win games we’re not expected to, sometimes we lose games we’re expected to win.
“The pressure, the scrutiny, the expectation, the exposure of the game has grown year on year.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel