Like A Mad Octopus: The State of Scottish Rugby This Month

Ryan has been trying to avoid writing about the convoluted cricket World Cup, and has now failed. I empathise with him though, as I have been trying to avoid writing about rugby for the best part of two months now. Evidently, I too have now failed. I did warn you all, back in December, that this time of year would be hard for the Scottish game. Irrespective of Six Nations performance, the fact is that all our best players are involved in it. And when the best players are removed from the Glasgow and Edinburgh sides, they struggle. Boy do they struggle.

Edinburgh (10th in Magners League) have ended up sacking their coach, the persistant Borderer Rob Moffit. For a man who has been ever present in some capacity in Scottish club rugby since its inception, I can neither take away his right to have held the job nor praise him for his achievements. He earned his chance, he tried and he failed. Fine. Nick Scrivenor, an Aussie who was defense coach under Moffit, is the interim boss and has started off by losing his first four games. Three of these in a row were tricky away games, to Munster, the Dragons and the Scarlets (the fourth loss was at Murrayfield to Cardiff). Not brilliant, but not surprising. I was actually impressed by the Burgh's showing at Thormond Parks against the Munstermen. They were tied at half time and could have won. Sadly, Glasgow were in the exact same situation there earlier this year. And guess what; they lost too!

Edinburgh seem to have a far greater number of youngsters in their squad to blood. Whether they will be any good is up to fate, but Dave Denton, Stuan Dewar, Lewis Niven and Stuart McInally have all played roles so far this year. It certainly seems that Edinburgh is favoured by the SRU when it comes to doling out our young talent. Perhaps this will be good for the future; we could see McInally, Denton and Alex Blair forming the spine of a pretty good side. I can always hope!

Glasgow (11th in the league). Oh Glasgow. How Dan Parks looks so alluring sitting there on the Cardiff bench. The current team plus Kelly Brown and Parks were semi-finallists last year let's not forget. And this year they would be bottom were it not for the slightly comical efforts of new boys Aironi. Glasgow have lost to Connacht twice for fucks sake. I would really question the policy the Warriors seem to be adhering to with regards signing up journeymen like Aramburu, Muldowney and Ryder, who cannot deliver any improvement in results when they are left to run the show.

Young Melrose fullback Stuart Hogg has started the past two games (home draw versus Dragons, heavy away loss versus Ospreys). Other younglings Finlay Gillies of Currie and Nick Campbell of Hawks seen bench action of late. Perhaps this should be a more permenant fixture in the Glasgow setup. Split the young Scottish talent up into two groups. Edinburgh can offer more integrated training opportunities to one group, keeping them training with each other and giving them first team minutes. Glasgow can let their allocated group play regularly for Premier One teams, and call them up when needed or when deserved. In both cases, the aim is near-constant exposure to good quality, competitive rugby environments. The Premier clubs are pretty much shunned by the current system. Perhaps this scheme, coupled with suitable financial compensation, would involve them more and also do wonders to improving coaching quality.

(Note to SRU: I claim intellectual rights to that idea. If you want to use it, give me a job.)

The National Side

Let's not talk about this just now...

Oh, fuck it. Why not man up and get it over with? Like getting teeth extracted, or a rectal exam.

France game: Showed much more promise in attack, but still failed to nail down issues such as lack of support runners, offloading in contact and quick ball generation through the forwards. Defensively, we were average and we made far too many mistakes, which a French side that hinsight shows to be pretty mundane were able to exploit.

Wales game: Pathetic inability to execute any part of our gameplan, assuming we bothered to make one up. Slow ball all day, no penetration of the Welsh line at any stage. Fringe defense and open field tackling terrible. Dan Parks was abominable, kicking away possession it took extremes of time and effort to come by. Going to this game was undoubtedly the most futile and forlorn way to spend a weekend in Edinburgh, save searching for love and consolation at City afterwards .

Ireland game: The boys got some praise for the close 18-21 scoreline, but in my view this was as bad as the Wales game, if not worse due to its context; bringing the passion back to Murrayfield were you lads? The Irish were in the main tripe. They basically spent the entire second half trying to gift us a win, and for most of the first they kicked us back the ball without fail. And yet we failed to break the line once in the entire game save one Max Evans burst. They gave us 12 straight arm penalties and 7 minor ones and we still couldn't put them to bed or score a try. The defense for both Irish tries was as bad as some of the Matt Williams stuff; genuinely, you wouldn't see under 18's defend their line as badly as for the first try. Interestingly, Nigel Owens chose this game to make his theatrical debut, prancing around like he was the main attraction, not speaking to the Irish even after 8 penalties, not carding O'Callaghan in spite of his 4 penalties and giving Jacobsen a card for nothing. But even without him, we would have still lost.

Lad Awards for February (January was shit, believe me!)

The Internationals will get the praise this month. Club standouts have been Colin Gregor and DTH Van Der Merwe for Glasgow, and Netani Talei, Jim Thompson and David Blair of Edinburgh (Blair mainly for playing every minute of every game)

Most Laddish Forward: Richie Gray
Most 'Laddish' Back: Sean Lamont
Phil Godman Award for Uselessness: Headliners Ross Ford, Euan Murray and Nick De Luca. Supporting acts John Barclay, Hugo Southwell and Richie Vernon
LAD of the Month(s): Sean Lamont for shouting a lot

GM (with thanks the the great Bill McLaren for providing the title)