Well what did you expect? A miracle in Paris?
I wrote last week that Scotland would need a miracle to beat Ireland and sadly we got a nightmare instead, one that began 28 years ago when rugby stopped being an amateur game.
It wasn’t that Scotland were truly bad, it was just that the No. 1 team in the world were devastatingly good and reaped the reward for years of proper professionalism in the way they run their sport on the island across the Irish Sea.
If you accept that performance in the World Cup is the true mark of your progress or lack of it, then Ireland is a street ahead of Scotland in so many aspects of the game. No one individual is to blame for Scottish failure in France, but in truth the Scotland squad and coaching staff did all that could be expected of them, and at least we have qualified for the 2027 World Cup.
As always there are those who want to apportion blame, and the head coach is always the target. Those calling for Gregor Townsend to go should answer this question – apart from Franco Smith at Glasgow, who else in Scottish coaching could do as well as Townsend?
Yes he made selection mistakes on Saturday such as leaving out Hamish Watson and going with 6 forwards and two backs on the bench, but Scotland were also dreadfully unlucky to lose Blair Kinghorn – in his short time on the pitch he looked like a 50-cap veteran – and captain Jamie Ritchie to injury, but too many players had a poor day at the office while Ireland were simply excellent.
The immediate blame should go elsewhere. I have already blamed World Rugby’s incompetence for carrying out the draw in December 2020 based on rankings recorded in January of that year. Utter farce, and hopefully the last time such a ridiculous situation occurs. But it wasn’t just the premature draw that put Scotland in a sticky situation in France, it was the failure of Scottish rugby as a whole, and it is a long-term failure going back to the advent of professionalism in 1995.
The Scottish Rugby Union wasn’t just blindsided by the move to professionalism, it was cast into a miasma of doubt and – yes, I’ll say it – cowardice at the very top of the Union. Like Scotland the Irish Rugby Football Union was caught short at first – Ireland finished bottom of the Five Nations table in in each of the first three seasons after the game went open - but then the governing body embraced the change and came up with the Four Province system. What’s more they stuck with it, and by making their provinces effectively into super clubs, Ireland began to progress inexorably with their player pathway system second to none.
Think of the litany of great talent the country has produced in the last two decades or so – Keith Wood, Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell, Rory Best, Ronan O’Gara, Conor Murray, Cian Healey, Johnny Sexton and the current crop of Peter O’Mahony, Josh van der Flier, Tadhg Furlong, Hugo Keenan, Dan Sheehan, James Lowe, Caelan Doris and so many more.
Apart from a few, very few, judicious imports such as Bundee Aki – a possible player of the tournament in France - and Jamison Gibson-Park, all of Ireland’s current squad are home grown. They have grown up together and I am confident they will beat the All Blacks in the quarter final in Paris on Saturday – this just 11 years after New Zealand inflicted a 60-0 defeat on Ireland, their heaviest-ever loss. The point is that Ireland have progressed massively in the last decade and the reigning Grand Slam champions are ranked No 1 on merit. I am forecasting a France v Ireland final, and what a match that will be.
In Scottish rugby we cannot go back and undo the mistakes of yesteryear. The failure to build on the existing four district system, coupled with the downgrading of clubs, can be seen now as the errors which put Scottish rugby into a downward spiral that was only corrected when the Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby began to make progress – the former under Townsend, funnily enough.
The recent frankly dreadful performances at age group level offer no great hope for the future, and don’t get me started on the butchery of the grass roots where the only bright spot is the genuine growth in women’s rugby.
There will be the usual review of the Scotland performance in France, and no doubt it will be conducted in secret by SRU blazers and we’ll never know what they conclude. The future of Scottish rugby should start with openness and honesty, and then we can make progress at all levels.
My own judgement is that Scotland did exactly as expected, and were not disgraced. That’s all we could reasonably ask.
