The End?

In Dante’s epic poem Divine Comedy he describes his journey through Hell – Hell in my opinion is not nine circles of suffering located within the Earth but in a staircase.  A staircase you are strapped to in an OAP stairlift, it's put into super slow mo in its descent and there are videos of fat bluffer’s dribblings on an endless loop all the way down.  Even with a chirpy Virgil sitting on your lap cracking jokes by the time you reached the end your only hope would be your brain shutdown around about halfway, if not you'd be a gibbering wreck - not dissimilar to the star of the video you've been forced to endure.

If you're still conscious by the end, then you're treated to the 2014 Six Nations – but only the Scottish matches, even the chirpy Virgil has buggered off by the end of the English match and there you are all alone, forced to relive the horror of Scotland trying to play rugby.  In the Divine Comedy this journey was supposed to represent your journey to finding god – clearly Cardiff represents the opposite, so it’s hello Satan – how you doing big man?

If we weren't so devoid of talented players I would like the SRU to ban Stuart Hogg from international rugby until the Autumn - his actions on the field not only resulted in his teammates having suffer the ignominy of 70k braying Welshmen laughing at them, but he shamed the very jersey with his actions.  If you had watched Hogg all through the 6Ns you will have seen this coming, he's been behaving like a spoilt brat for the last month and a half.  Little niggle shoves, late hits, spoilt brat face twisted into disbelief that things are not going his way.  Whilst his assault on Bigger was not a surprise, it's ridiculous it happened when Scotland were still in the game.  Whilst I wouldn't want to ever justify what he did, you could maybe understand the frustration bubbling up in what is clearly still a very immature stupid young man - but it wasn't, there was 60mins still to go and to compound all of this behaviour, he didn't look that bothered when the cards were changed from yellow to red. 

It seems incomprehensible that any Scottish side could lose by 48 pts to a fellow 6Ns side, even if we did play for an hour with 14 men, it's still bewildering to me.  Teams train with a man down all the time, their defensive patterns are practically second nature - why did we capitulate so badly?

There have been some pretty terrible humpings handed out to Scottish teams over the years, normally by good SH sides - but yesterday smacked of players just giving up, it's unacceptable at any level, but to do it with your country's strip on your back is beneath contempt.  I hope every one of those players can look at themselves in the mirror this morning.

If it turns out the capitulation was a reaction to the clown in charge from the players then nobody is really a winner.  The life of a professional rugby player is I suppose no different to the rest of us, if you get lumbered with a clueless boss you generally have a couple of choices, grin and bear it or move on.  But if you happen to be an internationalist your options are grin and bear it or retire.  Not a pleasant option when you're young and starting out.  So you grin and bear it and eventually the whole sorry mess grinds to an unholy mess and the big boss gets rid of the clown who has been your immediate boss.  But the gossip and rumours coming out from the Scottish camp do not make pleasant listening.

After 25 years of work I have always been rather sceptical of the Peter Principle – this is a theory that people tend to be promoted until they reach their position of incompetence – I shall leave you for a minute to consider this within the context of the SRU.

Well?  Do you think it relevant?  The fat bluffers level of incompetence has long since gone – not only within the employ of the SRU, but in practically every job he has had in rugby.  Yet he’s moving upstairs to become the SRU’s Director of Rugby – I am still so angry about this I find it difficult to articulate just how hacked off it makes me feel.

Scottish Rugby is not going to magically get better with the appointment of Vern Cotter – who I hope has the personality to close the door in the face of the FB every time he wants to stick his nose in the national team affairs.  It’s only going to get better when two of its highest office bearers Dodson and Johnson are shown the door.

How can we make this happen?