Scott Johnson - Fat Bluffer

It's a gift I have and one that I like to think has helped me tiptoe through the vagaries of life, alas this gift is not much good as a rugby supporter.  You see, my gift is spotting charlatans and chancers – whilst it has stopped me purchasing snake oil and timeshares – it has also stopped me enjoying much of Scottish professional rugby  as a succession of woeful coaches have arrived, appointed by the equally hapless SRU CEOs.

When Matt Williams was appointed, Scotland were at a pretty low ebb – Geech should probably not have taken on the reigns in the early noughties as he did a great deal of damage to his and Scotland’s legacy in this time.  In walks possibly the most pompous self-satisfied person since Clive Woodward, his smarmy smile self-congratulations for a time coaching Leinster backs (during the era where they didn’t win anything) – immediately my BS alarm went off the scale.  Rugby is a complex game and even at its most fundamental it’s not a simple game as some TV pundits like utter from slack-jaws – but as soon as coaches start trotting out meaningless buzzwords and trite nonsense about up-skilling they need to be taken out back and either given a good slap or a P45.  Matt Williams carried on like this for 2 whole terrible years, parroting nonsense about how Scotland players had no skill – whilst relegating our most skilful 10 to the wing and parachuting in a kicking robot with a heart the size of dust mite.  As his tenure got worse he basically just blamed the players and as the fans started to make themselves heard, idiots in the Scottish media accused us of racism – like we only wanted shot of him because he was an Aussie .

For the next few years my gift was never really used as Hadden and Robinson bumbled along – both their appointments made a certain sense and whilst I wouldn’t want to spend a night on the beers with either, you were left with the impression they were more likely to more damage to themselves than Scotland. 

It wasn’t until Bradley was appointed at Edinburgh the alarm bells started ringing - this was a man with an appalling coaching record, who was basically run out of Ireland, an Ireland with barely an Irish coach earning a living from the game.  I looked on in horror as he took charge and vowed I would not pay to watch Edinburgh play until he was gone – a record I managed until he bumbled into an HEC QF and my son pleaded with me to take him.  I am sure the HEC run will be used by his supporters (himself and his granny) as an indicator of his true talents – I prefer to take a more sober view and point out the pool was 4 poor teams and Edinburgh were the least poor. 

Anyway, I digress as this is a rant about Scottish national team coaches and thankfully even the SRU CEO was not foolish enough to appoint Bradley to this role.

I mentioned alarm bells ringing for previous appointments, well the ringing didn’t happen in June 2012 – oh no it was far worse than that.  Back in the 1970s the government still used to do air-raid siren tests – they sounded horrific, scary and not at all pleasant – which was probably their purpose.  Imagine one of those going off in your head as the SRU issue a press statement informing the world they have appointed Scott Johnson as Assistant Coach to Andy Robinson.  I was utterly stunned – I could not believe the appointment.

Scott Johnson is the charlatan’s charlatan – there isn’t enough snake oil in the world for this man to do his job – but even more strangely is he earns a living from rugby coaching.

I immediately named him the Fat Bluffer and became even more grumpy when discussing rugby – my friends got more and more hacked off with my constant rants about this man and how he will do as he done in every previous job – destroy the dressing room, blame the players and then disappear with a severance cheque in his back pocket.  Only the last part of this is missing and I am sure it will play itself out eventually.

I never fail to be astonished by sports coaches – specifically Football and Rugby – having a CV filled with failure does not appear to be an impediment to getting a well-paid role in either sport.  Even a cursory glance at Scott Johnson’s CV should have had even the most reckless of individuals pausing and thinking, mmmmm maybe not.  Before we knew it Robinson had resigned after one too many lamentable performances and Johnson was in charge.  Everyone at the SRU was at pains to say he was interim boss and a replacement for Robinson was being actively sought – seeing as Johnson is barely a backs coach it was prudent to get a forwards coach on-board.  Dean Ryan was employed until the end of the 2013 6Ns – after seeing what the pair of them conspired to have our forwards doing I would happily have chipped in to get Ryan’s plane ticket purchased earlier.  Let me give you an insight into Scottish rugby – from an early age, every boy wants to play the in the backrow, if you have a modicum of creativity then it’s centre for you (who are just frustrated flankers).  Backrowers fit the Scottish psyche perfectly – aggressive, destructive and more than a bit mental.  The consequence of this is, we produce very good backrowers, who are 9 times out of 10 the best players in a Scotland side – with this in mind the genius tactical plan for our forwards in the 2013 6Ns was don’t compete at the breakdown.  It’s the equivalent of having Pele in your football side and telling him not to score.

So, Scotland played out the 2013 6Ns with their forwards standing politely by and surrendering the breakdown to the opposition – unbelievably this resulted in 2 wins.  


Proof if ever it were needed that Scott Johnson was a genius – is a line uttered into his shaving mirror every morning I suspect – but not one that would stand up to closer inspection.  Unbelievably the supine Scottish rugby press were lapping this up, they declared the 6Ns were a success and it was onwards to the South Africa tour.  A win against Italy in the quadrangle tournament was always going to be a struggle with Lions callups and injuries.  During this time a forwards coach was appointed – now, the biggest difficulty with this appointments would be who would be daft enough to work under Johnson – the answer was another woeful coach lucky to be earning a living in the sport – Jonathon Humphreys.
Under Hadden and Robinson Scotland developed a pack that could go toe to toe with any other in world rugby, they won their lineouts, scrums and generated a great deal of ball – sadly this coincided with a time when Dan Parks, Andy Henderson and Graeme Morrison were stinking up the midfield and we never had any backs to capitalise.  In 12 months the Scotland pack have become as weak as I ever remember it and I have been watching Scotland since 1973.  Their lineout would be taken apart by an u10s mini side and bear in mind they only start playing lineouts at u10s – the scrum creaks like an arthritic man and the last time the generated anything resembling fast ball Laidlaw probably kicked it.  Now Humphreys is not solely to blame for this, but the technical decline using largely the same players is telling.  I reckon I could get 7 fellow 40 something’s together and we could score from an attacking lineout against this Scottish pack.

	1st Choice	2nd Choice	3rd Choice	4th Choice
Blindside	Brown	Strokosch	Harley	Low
Openside	Rennie	Barclay	Grant	Fusaro
No 8	Beattie	Denton	Hogg	Wilson

I wont go on about the England match as it still upsets me too much – but it appears the players have given up under him, much like the end of William’s reign in 2005 they have no idea what his game plan is, don’t much like his public utterances and look lost on the field.

The appointment made many of us scratch our heads not least because the SRU had managed to stumble into a decent bit of business and announced they had appointed Vern Cotter as the new coach – brilliant we thought, but with classic SRU ineptitude they said he was seeing out his contract at ASM and would not in fact be joining Scotland until June 2014.  Now I mentioned head scratching as Cotter is a forwards coach himself and not someone who would want a coach like Humphreys working under him and Humphreys was given a 2yr contract.

The Autumn Internationals are traditionally a time for the home unions to fill up their coffers and for coaches to introduce new players – fans will forgive an element of experimentation and the ticket prices and odd empty seat reflects this – this forgiveness will not be extended to the 6Ns however.  Scotland in the autumn were pretty woeful.  Scoring 47 points against Japan hid the fact the Japanese ran in 3 tries, two of which were down the debutant winger’s wing.  The next two games told us where we are in the great scheme of things – slapped aside and nilled by South Africa and cuffed by a very average Australia – but but but we only lost by 6pts was the line most heard in the sycophantic Scottish press, yes – but we could still be playing and not come close to scoring a try.  We never looked like winning.

So onwards we limped to the 6Ns and the scene of Johnson’s greatest crimes – the squad selected in January had few surprises but the most notable was the exclusion of two opensides who had just won successive HEC man of the matches in January – John Barclay and Roddy Grant were in fantastic form, both having an impact on games far beyond the influence a single player should have.  Neither were selected and the Fat Bluffer went into full in your face BS mode – apparently Kelly Brown was only to be considered an openside now and an honest Glasgow pro Fusaro was also in the squad.  Before I point out the madness of Johnson’s selection I shall provide a handy little table with available Scottish backrowers in their correct positions:

Now, I will concede that Rennie is still not ready after 14 months out – but can anyone explain to me why Johnson selected a backrow of:

Wilson, Brown and Denton for the Irish match and then Wilson, Fusaro and Denton for the English match.

Can someone please explain it to me?  Maybe I need to consume peyote and sit in the desert for a night to get an insight – but it’s not a risk I am willing to take.  The only explanation I can think of and it’s not that outlandish, is Johnson is a clueless fool.  He’s a fool with a nasty streak however, after that lamentable second half performance against the Irish he dropped Brown and then hinted that Brown’s test career could be over.  I have long since stopped listening or reading anything from Johnson but a colleague brought it to my attention, I was appalled.  Quite apart from the fact Brown is twice the man Johnson will ever be, it’s surely his decision and not some spoofer from Australia to decide on his test career - to even suggest this in the press shows a spiteful side that will hopefully come back to bite him.

The Irish game had Scotland playing dull but competitive rugby for 35mins – we competed at the breakdown and as long as we were not throwing the ball into the lineout suggested we would stay competitive until the end.  Within 10mins of the break the game was over, the forward effort fell apart and Johnson substituted Brown who up until this time was single-handedly competing with the Irish at the breakdown.  To compound this stupidity, he substituted our openside for a number 8 – unbelievably we had 3 No 8s in all backrow positions – the only surprise is we kept the score under 30.

Everyone expected changes for the English match, Ford couldn’t hit a rap dancer’s derriere from 2ft, Hamilton spent the match annoying the ref and achieving very little, Swinson was out-muscled in the lineout and loose and gives under pressure props little relief in the scrum, Wilson put in a shift that should have had him handing back his pay packet for February and Laidlaw is slower than a wet weekend in Arbroath when you’re bound to a chair staring at a fish.

What does Johnson do, he drops Brown, MacArthur and R Gray from the 23 – bewildering isn’t it.  He’s been dribbling nonsense for the last 4 months that his role is to give as many Scottish players test experience before the RWC15 – it appears all it takes is catching his eye during his selection with darts and dartboard and you too could be making your debut for Scotland.

Scotland don’t have many pro players, even less test class players and the most important job a Scotland coach is to pick form players in the correct position.  It doesn’t sound like rocket science does it, but the last Scotland coach to do so was Jim Telfer.

Johnson is not going to be Scotland coach after the 6Ns – however he’s blagged another role – Director of Rugby.  Take a moment to ponder that folks.  The person who should be considering resignation is Mark Dodson, sadly I suspect he will still be at his desk alongside his appointment Johnson – both having a wee laugh at an organisation that rewards incompetence with 6 figure salaries.