• Help Support The Rugby Forum :

What happens to Scottish rugby?

Superalexmarket

Bench Player
Joined
Sep 9, 2012
Messages
863
Country Flag
Argentina
Club or Nation
Duendes
Since 1999 when they won for the last time, the five nations' tournament, Scottish rugby has been lost in years of darkness, where their only goal seems do not get the "wooden spoon" of 6 N. And new generations aparently have no answers to this problem.
What happened to the Scottish rugby to come to this? Perhaps Psychic, or anyone else can guide me a little.
 
Professionalism and moving away from its heartland in the borders, the SRFU where as much in denial about the game going pro as their English counterparts but the English game was saved thanks to the clubs getting together and sticking 2 fingers up at the RFU.
 
Lack of quality players is the reason. I think they're on the verge of improving. Ryan Grant, Richie Gray, Jim Hamilton, Josh Strauss (once he qualifies), Kelly Brown, Greig Laidlaw, Mark Bennett, Stuart Hogg, Sean Maitland and Tim Visser is the guts of a very strong starting XV.
 
With nations like Scotland, sometimes the stars align and they get a good batch of players at once and punch somewhat above their weight. But they're a small football nation, so cannot really sustain success.
 
Lack of quality players is the reason. I think they're on the verge of improving. Ryan Grant, Richie Gray, Jim Hamilton, Josh Strauss (once he qualifies), Kelly Brown, Greig Laidlaw, Mark Bennett, Stuart Hogg, Sean Maitland and Tim Visser is the guts of a very strong starting XV.

I completely agree with you
 
With nations like Scotland, sometimes the stars align and they get a good batch of players at once and punch somewhat above their weight. But they're a small football nation, so cannot really sustain success.

They've around the same population as Ireland and Ireland have a more successful soccer and rugby teams and the big sport is Gaelic games..


I don't know too much about Scottish rugby but I do know they f'ed up when building Murrayfield. They spent all their money paying off its debt and that was at the expense of developing the game in Scotland. Also you have the borders who had a team but I think there was a load of infighting there and they got poor crowds.


The Scots are making a comeback though. Glasgow are really strong now because they've built up a decent squad of players. Next step is attracting bigger crowds and once they do that the money will flow in.
 
Their level has considerably - nay, RIDICULOUSLY - dropped since the 90's. They could rival good teams in the RWC back then. Now they'd be ecstatic if they ever made it past the pool stages...and yes, in the 6N, they're basically trying to fight off the Wooden Spoon really.

With nations like Scotland, sometimes the stars align and they get a good batch of players at once and punch somewhat above their weight. But they're a small football nation, so cannot really sustain success.

I don't think that's it man, as Profitius stated...and they were fine aaaaaaall the way til around the start of the 6N. They've had the same demographics the whole time...but they could actually beat teams in the home nations back then, now, any win in the 6N is a big feat.
 
Last edited:
Their level has considerably - nay, RIDICULOUSLY - dropped since the 90's. They could rival good teams in the RWC back then. Now they'd be ecstatic if they ever made it past the pool stages...and yes, in the 6N, they're basically trying to fight off the Wooden Spoon really.

Didn't this year......
 
...uh...are you being English right now and hinting at the fact that France got the Spoon this year ?! :lol:
you dick ! ;)

No but srsly, they looked terrible in every single game; the one against Italy they got lucky Italy had produced huge at home in the opener and had to pull out their ****tiest form in a year. They never, ever should have won against Ireland; and then lost easily to everybody else. Even that one try in Paris was illegal.
 
Must admit winning a game with 20% possession would suggest Ireland lost as appose to Scotland winning....
 
Lack of quality players is the reason. I think they're on the verge of improving. Ryan Grant, Richie Gray, Jim Hamilton, Josh Strauss (once he qualifies), Kelly Brown, Greig Laidlaw, Mark Bennett, Stuart Hogg, Sean Maitland and Tim Visser is the guts of a very strong starting XV.

This is another problem for Scottish rugby, these players have not been primarily developed in Scotland and some of them are..... shall I say....very loosely associated with the country. I'm not turning this into an eleigibility ******* match, but Scotland have pretty much come out and said this will be their strategy in getting a better team. I think it's risky to assume the IRB won't ever tighten some of the eligibility rules(lot's of people in the know want the grandparent rule changed to just parents and residency upped to five years instead of three.)

Their 7's side is also struggling, and has been fighting to keep core status it seems in the last couple of years, I can't see the Glasgow leg of the tour being kept for too much longer not when there are more attractive options on the table.

Glasgow had a good season this year but Edinburgh struggled and it still seems as though Scotland can only get one of the two franchises at any kind of strength at any given time. These two franchises are what's essentially keeping them ahead of Canada, U.S.A., Georgia and in touch with the Pacific Islands. If North America and other Tier Two countries get pro leagues it will make the Scottish clubs less attractive and may hurt their player project plans, along with adding to the rising punch of the Tier Two's.

Likewise even at the macro level, the Scots have two seats on the IRB council, with countries like Argentina and Italy heading to two seats and surely some other rising powers likely to gain more sway, Scotland will be less able to make the rules in their favour, lets face it they are part of the Home Nations old boys club that had dominated the IRB for years, until Lappaset became chairman, you can see that in the last IRB election where all the old six unions(OZ and NZ included) voted for their own guy while every other country in the world voted for Lappaset.

I'm not sure where Scotland goes from here, they have a decent national team possibly on the horizon but I'm not sure if that answers some of the existential questions about Scottish rugby. I don't think any sort of collapse is imminent in any way, but with other lower ranked countries getting better the gap between Scotland and what are now the Tier Two's may be almost gone in a couple of RWC's.
 
Must admit winning a game with 20% possession would suggest Ireland lost as appose to Scotland winning....

^ exactly, still remember that stat.....80% possession to the men in green...Scotland SURVIVED the 6N very well.
A fine example that rankings are not what they seem some times, and one shouldn't just look at stats and numbers.

In 20 years, kids will look back and see Scotland in 3rd place back in 2013 !...unless they actually - watch - tha - matches.
 
There's this...

IRB+Player+Numbers.jpg


Playing numbers don't mean everything, but they do mean something. The top nations (England, France, Ireland, Wales, NZ, Australia, SA) all have 2 to 15 times the senior male playing numbers according to this.
 
Last edited:
I think those stats might be outdated badly, Canada has more players than Scotland and I believe Italy now as well. And there is no way Georgia only has 900 senior male players.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, it's dated from the 2011 World Cup and the stats are only as accurate as the methods used to collect the data, but it gives some indication as to what may be going on with Scottish rugby. It wouldn't surprise me if Canada have outgrown Scotland now though.
 
Yeah, it's dated from the 2011 World Cup and the stats are only as accurate as the methods used to collect the data, but it gives some indication as to what may be going on with Scottish rugby. It wouldn't surprise me if Canada have outgrown Scotland now though.

Yeah I was being a little pedantic, I definately get the gist of your post and I agree with it.
 
Those playing number stats are not accurate at all. There isn't a snowballs chance in hell that Ireland have the same numbers as NZ. Likewise 2.5m players in England is a gross exaggeration of their actual playing numbers.
 
Those playing number stats are not accurate at all. There isn't a snowballs chance in hell that Ireland have the same numbers as NZ. Likewise 2.5m players in England is a gross exaggeration of their actual playing numbers.

the 2.5m includes schools rugby and clubs rugby, England's actually number of senior males playing is 166,000 (roughly). Ireland having more than NZ is interesting and not expected but I think that graph included tag rugby in Ireland.
 

Latest posts

Top