analysis He might have averted financial catastrophe but chief executive has done little but run Scottish rugby down since, says Alasdair Reid

More palace coups than the Romanovs, more internecine battles than the Borgias: we really are talking of the ultimate neighbours from hell.

And yet, we should resist the temptation to place yesterday’s ructions in EH12 in the context of all those other Murrayfield meltdowns of recent years.

The follies of the past decade and a half might be seen as the struggles of an essentially amateur institution to come to terms with the demands of a professional era, but the latest eruption is far more easily classified as a simple personality clash.

Well, simple in the sense that it revolves around just one personality. Gordon McKie was never short of cheerleaders in the extended honeymoon period of his first few years as chief executive of the Scottish Rugby Union, but it has become devilishly difficult to find anyone with a good word to say about him over the past few months.

Small wonder he has all but vanished behind the parapet of his Murrayfield fastness, emerging just once for what proved to be an ill-considered and hopelessly unsuccessful attempt to round on his critics.

That event took place at the national stadium in March. McKie had summoned the Scottish rugby press to his stronghold to explain where his policies were taking the game, but the exercise backfired spectacularly. McKie floundered horribly, lost for answers and stuck for words.

Had the national coach Andy Robinson not been there to drag the McKie rabbit out of the headlights with a few well-timed interjections, the result would have been even more excruciating.

As it was, we were left with the powerful impression that the man who had been brought in to save Scottish rugby from bankruptcy five and a half years earlier had simply run out of ideas.

That, at least, was the generous interpretation of his obvious discomfort during an interrogation that was robust, certainly, but hardly the most savage he could have faced. Less kindly souls might have suggested that he never had any ideas in the first place.

And that, in a nutshell, is the big question McKie has to answer. In the wake of the calamitous administrative crash of 2005, he had been brought in -- with the ‘approval’ of the union’s bankers, if not their outright insistence -- to steady the SRU’s sinking ship and turn it away from the rocks of financial catastrophe.

Opinions vary on how well he has accomplished that task, with his most vehement critics believing that improvements to the union’s financial position are simply the consequence of smoke-and-mirrors rescheduling of debt and better management of cash flow rather than fundamental improvements to the business model.

On the matter of driving the business forward there is rather more of a consensus. In short, nobody believes McKie has made any headway at all.

In which light, the mind goes back to another Murrayfield briefing. A few months after he moved into the top job, McKie faced the press to say what he intended to do for Scottish rugby. Flanked by Allan Munro, the union chairman, and president Andy Irvine, he outlined a litany of past failures at the SRU.

The organisation had been irresponsible, profligate and its management procedures had been hopelessly ill-suited to running its affairs. Bizarrely, he even singled out the shortcomings of individual staff, suggesting they might like to seek employment elsewhere.

It was a dramatic performance. But as he cursed his predecessors, it wasn’t easy to work out how McKie was going change things beyond tidying up the books. And there, perhaps, lay the nub of the problem. McKie, Munro and Irvine were all successful enough in their particular fields of accountancy, finance and property surveying, but it would be pushing it to say they were glowing with entrepreneurial zeal.

And the fact of the matter is that any entertainment business needs some of that to press forward.

Hence the groundswell of opinion that McKie was the right man for the job six years ago, but that Scottish rugby needs something -- make that someone -- rather different now. Autonomous teams and commercial savvy have driven professional rugby onwards and upwards in England, France, Wales and Ireland, but the Scottish sides have stood still.

McKie closed down the Borders and has kept Edinburgh and Glasgow on a tight leash. Not just in terms of their financing, but in every aspect of their organisation.

When Rob Moffat was removed from his post as Edinburgh coach a few months ago, it was significant that the decision was taken by McKie, in tandem with Robinson, and that Craig Docherty, nominally the man at the helm of the capital side, had no say in the matter.

The dead hand of central control has stifled Scotland’s professional teams in McKie’s era, just as it did in the earliest days of pay-for-play. Back then, the administrators the game had inherited from the amateur era could at least claim that they knew no better, but that excuse is no longer available.

The mountain of evidence from other countries shows beyond all doubt whatsoever that clubs succeed as vibrant, independent entities, but McKie offers no hope that Scotland’s two sides -- haemorrhaging players, consistently unsuccessful in Europe, playing in atmosphere-free grounds in front of ever-diminishing crowds -- will ever be allowed to follow those examples.

And while almost all the numbers in Scottish rugby plot depressing graphs of decline and decay, it rankles many in the game’s wider community that the one chart that bucks that trend is the one measuring McKie’s personal rewards.

According to the SRU accounts, in his first year at the helm McKie enjoyed a package worth £178,000. In the most recent, that had risen to £312,000. Anyone care to speculate what performance-related formula could possibly have produced a 75% increase?

You certainly won’t find it on the field of play. After a modest improvement, Edinburgh and Glasgow went into freefall last season. The latter finished second-from-last in the Magners League, while the Capital side salvaged a modicum of pride with a late rally that moved them up to eighth place. Having contended for top-four slots over the two previous terms, it was a deeply depressing development.

So, too, the loss of players from their ranks. Of course, a certain turnover is to be expected, but there has been something close to an alarming enthusiasm at Murrayfield for getting the high earners off the books while bringing in replacements of a far inferior standard. Few supporters believe that things are likely to get better next season.

There is also the issue of McKie’s management style to consider. As chief executive of an organisation that relies, fundamentally, on making friends, he appears to have a curious enthusiasm for making enemies instead.

All things considered, bringing new money into Scottish rugby shouldn’t be the hardest gig in sport, but sponsors have not exactly been hammering at the gates of Murrayfield in recent years.

McKie appears to have survived the challenge to his authority. Given the damage that previous insurrections have cause to the wider game, that may not be such a bad thing. But the best interpretation of events at Murrayfield yesterday is that McKie has simply bought himself some time. He still has to deal with the problems that have brought discontent simmering to the surface.

Either that, or someone else will. Sir Moir Lockhead, the man behind the creation of the hugely successful transport conglomerate FirstGroup, takes over from Munro as chairman of Scottish Rugby later this month. An engineer by training and an entrepreneur by instinct, Sir Moir is probably not the natural bedfellow of a born beancounter.

Rumour has it McKie was not best pleased by Sir Moir’s appointment when it was confirmed a few months ago. More interesting times for the family that is forever at war.