We’re all hoping Scottish Rugby has recruited a miracle worker
◆ It’ll be good if Nucifora can replicate his achievements in Ireland – but don’t forget clubs are still the beating heart of the game
In rugby, as in football, big news is now often about off-the-field action. Such news doesn't often come bigger than the SRU'S capture of the Australian guru David Nucifora, who has played such an important role, mostly behind the scenes, in Ireland’s emergence in the last ten years as arguably the outstanding team in the Northern Hemisphere.
If he can do anything like as good a job at Murrayfield, he may be thought a miracleworker. He has said that the first shock he got on arrival in Dublin was learning that Ireland had never beaten New Zealand. Now they have won five of their last nine matches against the All Blacks. Scotland, like Ireland ten years ago, have still never won one.
One mustn't exaggerate. All is not gloom. The national team were recently ranked as high as fifth in the world while Glasgow are the URC champions – no mean effort that. Yet we all recognise that it's a struggle to hold on to our ranking, a bigger one to improve it too, with Scotland having dropped back to seventh, while Glasgow will do quite remarkably well if they can emerge as URC champions again next May.
We are all aware that our age-group rugby is in a bad way and has been for several years now. Some of this is understandable; our under-20 team is more often than not out-weighted and out-powered. There is little strength in depth compared to England and France, while we recognise that the intensity of Irish schools rugby, especially in Leinster, has nothing comparable here. On the other hand, it's disturbing when we find our under-20s losing to Italy and Wales – Italy having no great depth to draw on, Wales suffering from organisation worse than Scotland.
Given that the experiment of the semi-pro Super6 which was originally to be a bridge between the amateur club game and the professional one has been abandoned, it is surely even more urgent that some structure offering fiercely competitive rugby to serve as a bridge from the youth game to the full professional club one be devised. Perhaps Nucifora may come up with an answer. If he does he will be worth whatever the SRU will be paying him.
Meanwhile, this weekend sees the start of the amateur club season, and if the top league can't offer the glamour that it had in the old days when you might stroll down to your local ground and see at least half a dozen Scottish internationalists at close quarters, it still offers the prospect of skilful and intensely competitive rugby.
For any who have become accustomed to watching rugby on the TV screen or some other device, it's an eyeopener to stand by a touchline and realise just how fiercely physical rugby is – you can hear, and almost feel, the crunch of a tackle as you never do when watching the screen.
Club rugby doesn't get much attention in the national press now but it is still at the heart of the game. Looking at my new season's Selkirk membership card, I am made aware yet again of just how much a rugby club is a sort-of family affair. People willingly, happily, play a part long after their own playing career is behind them. This year's president is Graham Marshall, very unlucky not to have had more than a handful of Scotland caps some 30-odd years ago. John Rutherford, the greatest Scotland fly-half of the amateur days, has filled every conceivable role in the club since his playing career ended. Our match and referees secretary, Mary Inglis, has been doing that for around 20 years, while her late husband, Jim, played prop for Scotland in the early fifties, and was club president for the first time more than 40 years ago.
Most clubs could tell a similar story, even if they have never fielded a Scotland player. Those who play for a club and serve it when they've retired from the pitch are the heart and life-blood of rugby without whose love of the game and their club, rugby would wither and die. If you haven't been to a club game for years – perhaps never – go along. You'll find it a refreshing delight, even if there are a few more dropped passes and missed tackles than you see on TV.
Perhaps Nucifora may come up with an answer. If so, he’ll be worth whatever the SRU is paying him