Irvine appeals for clubs to nurture

SRU President Andy Irvine has called for Scotland's clubs to stop buying in foreign players and breed more home-grown talent to help the game in the country move forward.

Irvine praised both SRU and the clubs for the way they have handled the recent and ongoing cashflow crisis within the game in the country, but he also warned that it was only the start of the struggle.

"I would like clubs to go away and seriously consider whether we can finance the game at club level because I don't think we can," Irvine was quoted by The Scotsman as saying at the AGM on Friday.

"We cannot afford to pay players in this country. Some clubs are trying to buy success.

"Where Club A might have a sponsor and go and buy overseas players, Club B down the road might not be as wealthy but still tries to match Club A and we get into a vicious circle.

"We are losing tens of thousands of pounds to players who should not be paid. If they are good enough they will play professional rugby.

"So I would ask clubs to work with each other and ask themselves if allowing tens of thousands of pounds to drain out of our game is in the best interests of Scottish rugby.

"I am not knocking foreign players, as people like Sean Lineen and Todd Blackadder have been very good here.

"But a quarter of our club players were from overseas last season and in the cup final 50 per cent of the players who took the field were from the Southern Hemisphere. That could be 80 or 90 per cent in five or ten years' time."

Irvine said that the SRU would not yet be imposing foreign player 'quotas', as has been done by other governing bodies in other leagues, and then praised once again the new sense of unity that has entered into Scottish rugby.

"I told you last year that the in-fighting and back-stabbing had stopped. That's true. Now go back and tell your clubs we have turned the corner and that Scotland will no longer be the whipping boys of world rugby," he said determinedly.

Irvine's words about foreign players and development at club level were backed up from an announcement from Gordon McKie, SRU Chief Executive, who said that a new development fund has been set up to distribute money to clubs and that talented young players would no longer be encouraged to leave their club for a Division One side.

McKie also mentioned a drive to create a new London Scottish academy in order to attract new Scottish talent outside of Scotland, but remained tight-lipped on the negotiations over the sale of one of Scotland's three professional teams.