Scottish Rugby: A Return To Pointlessness

After a sensible selection of autumn opponents this season, the SRU have gone chasing the big "Black" dollar again, announcing next year’s autumn opponents will be South Africa (yup), Samoa (yup), and New Zealand’s All Blacks (poo).

Other than encouraging the large and wonderful ex-pat Kiwi population here in the UK to come and make Murrayfield feel like the Cake Tin for the day (i.e. mostly filled with New Zealanders) and spend its money on Princes Street, I’m not sure how this helps a developing Scottish team.

Sure, you get to "measure yourself against the best," but we already know they are about  seven-foot something, and we are about five-foot. After that, it's just a matter of deciding the inches, and another loss we fans aren't really interested in watching, which leads to more criticism of our apathy and poor attendance.

"Oh but it's the All Blacks," I hear you say.

It's not the 1970s any more when they came by boat, they are over here every year, half of their guys have played in the GP, or in France, and we can watch the Super 14/Tri Nations on the telly (if we want to).

Most of the rugby world is over the haka. There is no novelty, and their "kick it then counter attack when they make a mistake" game works worryingly well against a team as error prone as ours still is.

Having run South Africa close a few years back, it should be more about improving to a stage at which we can actually beat them. The All Blacks still seem like a step too far in the space of three weeks. Why not play them closer to the World Cup, or just wait to spring one on them in the knockout stages, eh?

It has just occurred to me that I forgot yesterday to mention Glasgow’s great win over Gloucester...I was away over the weekend, so I missed most of the HC action on TV, but I managed to catch the Edinburgh game when I got home (decent game, silly substitutions lost it), and wandered along to Goldenacre on Saturday to watch Heriots take Boroughmuir apart. There was some decent stuff played in front of a small but vocal crowd, £10 to get in was a bit steep though I thought...marginally warmer than going to watch Highland...