Scottish Academies

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/rugby/top-rugby-stories/clubs-disagree-over-plans-to-boost-scottish-rugby-talent-1-2677212

Which way forward?

A - Prem clubs run the ten academies (like France & England)
B - 6 academies situated in major conurbations (like SA)
C - One center of excellence (like Oz)
D - Based round the two pro teams (the status quo)

This is a tough one. I'll have to consider my response carefully.

more to follow.....

A very tough one, and I don't think I have a strong enough understanding of the current process or the proposals to make up my mind.

They say that C won't work due to costs, which seems a very sensible way of ruling out options.

As regards the Prem club academy approach - do we think the Prem clubs are good enough and financially strong enough to do this? I'm not sure.

From a first principles perspective, the two pro sides need to be at the heart of the decisions and viewed as the pinnacle for Scottish rugby players, so whatever the outcome, the links to those two clubs needs to be as strong as possible, and their input both taken note of and invariably followed.

In answering this question, it’s probably better to work out exactly what is required, and see which of the proposed options provides the best fit:

Accessibility - if you’re a young player (say 16 or 17) the prospect of moving away from home, even if it’s to attend an academy with 100 other players your age, could be a rather daunting prospect. The academies should be sufficiently spread out (or there should be enough of them) that players shouldn’t have to travel for more than, say, an hour and a half to get there. Obviously this won’t be practical for all players (I’m sure there’s some scrummaging prodigy currently practicing his hits against highland bulls near Tobermory), but we have to be mindful of the fact that these players will, and should, have academic commitments.

Infrastructure - the cost of setting up semi-professional standard facilities at locations across Scotland could be pretty exorbitant, and they would probably take time to build. I can also see Generalissimo Salmond requiring that they be attached to existing academic institutions, and that wendyball be taught to all academy players, lest Scotland appear too, you know… Tory. So, where such facilities already exist, an academy should be set up. Not that we shouldn’t seek to expand the network of facilities, but I’m eager that these academies start churning out players as soon as humanly possible.

Playing time - One of the failings, as I see it, of the Elite Development Program is that while the young players are exposed to quality coaching (in the case of Edinburgh I’m not so sure…), they’re not playing every week. Unless a player is absolutely brilliant (in which case the academy would be redundant), or the pro-club that they’re attached to suffers a major injury crisis, they won’t be playing high-standard rugby every week. I’ve often felt that however good the facilities and coaching, if a player isn’t player isn’t playing he won’t progress.

Competition for positions - This is going to sound strange, but I don’t want the academy system to be too large. If everyone who plays the game gets into an academy, that sense of elite status is lost. I want players with a bit of swagger, pulling on a shirt thinking “I bloody earned this” and playing with hunger. Further, within each academy team, I want players to know that if they don’t perform, there’s another player champing at the bit to replace them. At every academy, for every position, for every Barclay, I want a Fusaro waiting in the wings, and I want the Barclay to know the consequences of failure both on and off the pitch.

Coaching standards and styles - Clearly coaching has to be good. More than that, though, it should be tailored to the particular stage of an academy player’s career. So, rather than practicing wild set-piece moves that won’t translate to the pro-level, I want the onus to be on attaining the level of fitness and basic skills required at pro level. It has been said that if a player reaches the required standard to be given a shot at pro level, their skill training effectively stops. I want to see an end to that trend.

At some point, I’ll apply these ideas to the available options. I'm very busy and important at the moment

B - Several academies situated in major conurbations

I think Scotland need to focus on getting the best of the talent in the local area...so create centres of excellence / academies in 6 prime areas of the country.

Borders - (Also shared with the falcons who could be worked with)
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Dundee
Aberdeen
Dumfries
Inverness

Something like that...

Every country is different so theres no right or wrong way. I'd go with 3 for Scotland. 1 main academy between Glasgow and Edinburgh to share with 2 smaller academies at either end of the country.

After considering it I would say 3 academies.

1. Highlands, based around inverness

2. Central, most likely Stirling

3. Borders, most likely Galashiels.

The problem isn't acaemies, the problem is getting the best young prospects exposure at pro club level without perhaps damaging Edinburgh and Glasgow's Rabo and ERC campeigns.

Again the third pro team as a development tool like Connacht rears its head.

Was something not tried with that Gael Force team a few seasons back?

RuggerRadge2611 wrote:
Again the third pro team as a development tool like Connacht rears its head.

RR, Connacht are not a development team. They're an independent team which looks out for itself, like the rest of the Irish provinces. In fact Eric Elwood has even said that they'll refuse to accept loan signings from the other provinces.

One or two new teams playing in the B%I cup is the way to go.

I think we need at least six regional academies, with regular meaningfull games against each other. AT the moment, the problem with teenage rugby in this country is that unless you play for a private school in edinburgh, you wont get exposed to anywhere near the level of meaningfull, high intensity rugby thats required if you have ambitions of playing at the highest level. The state schools just dont have the time and resources to put into coaching their teams, and theyre not going to unless theres radical overhaul. Creating these academies would give these kids the extra top class coaching that they need at this stage in their development that will bring them up to the same level as their fee paying counterparts, widening our talent pool, and meaning that not only will the standard of players being snapped up by the pro teams be higher, but they will have more experience of playing high level rugby than normal.

One central academy is just not going to be able to provide that, its going to require kids to move away from home with no guarantee of a return on their efforts, and who the heck do they play against? Same goes for 2 academies aligned to the pro teams. They cant just play each other every week.

The 10 academies attached to the prem sides sounds good initially, aiding them in bringing through home grown talent, opportunities to play decent level rugby, but what happens when a team is relegated? Does its academy just dissolve? The same goes for a team promoted, they are going to have to spring an academy out the ground, that may get dissolved again in 6 months time.

Regional is the only way forward imo.

What about 4 academies based on the 4 old districts?

For me the idea of having 6+ regional academies is the best way forward.

Edinburgh
Glasgow
Dundee
Aberdeen
Borders
Stirling

I would go as far as to base one round a combined Ayrshire and D&G setup. Future plans could then to add a Highlands & Islands setup in Inverness.

A is not an option as what happens when a Prem One club get relegated do we then need to move an academy to the promoted team - could mean there being 5 Edinburgh teams.

Kingshu wrote:What about 4 academies based on the 4 old districts?

Problem with this is in the old Caledonian region there is 2hr 45min between Stirling and Inverness, both part of the old region, not really something you can expect parents to do a couple of nights a week.

Given that Edinburgh and Glasgow have absolutely failed in providing world-class players for the national team, pulling crowds and winning trophies I don't really see the harm in trying to bring the premiership to a higher level at the expense of the professional teams. I'm also sceptical about the benefit of sevens. We need to increase player numbers and competition for places and having a centralised academy where players are allowed to vegetate when they're not picked for Edinburgh or Glasgow or mucking around in Dubai, Hong Kong etc is not the way forward.

It'll be interesting to see if Italy progress with their system or if they stagnate like we have. We also can't afford to rely on the kindness of strangers so throwing our hat in with the Falcons or London Scottish won't work either. Team sports don't seem to be particularly high on the agenda of Scottish schools either, which isn't exactly helpful.

This is actually one of the most crucial questions facing the national game
and deserves a lot of thought. I'll need to read more about this because as with FES I don't know enough about the current system. A couple of things strike me:

1. Location - This is very young men (well, boys really) that we're dealing with here. They may be unhappy living away from home, it may worry their parents and they may not have decided to devote all that much time to rugby at the moment. There have to be enough academies to offer one reasonably close to where the child is from.

2. Money - The number that we choose has to be a number that has the promise of adequate funding - there is no point having wildly differing standards between academies. What has the SRU provided for this? As has been mentioned above, at least 4 so that they can play each other at various age group levels would be good.

3. Teaching - Surely this is the most important thing - I am assuming that unless the coaches are franchise professionals (Sean Lineen is still the Scotland U-20 coach, incidentally) the coaching staff will be club coaches and school coaches. Will their costs be covered? How will they find the time? Will there be dedicated academy coaches?

4. Talent spotting - I would think that club coaches and schools coaches are best placed to suggest youngsters. The question is whether the affilliation to clubs should be overt or not.

I can see one academy affiliated to the Glasgow and Edinbugh teams (with which their EDP programmes can be merged), with another affiliated to Northern Schools and Clubs and one more affiliated to Borders Schools and Clubs (the equivalent of Oxbridge, surely!).

Perhaps this is just legal training but surely a big consultancy firm would be able to carry out a study of another successul academy structures and propose a viable Scottish academy system giving funding constraints and current/future projections of player numbers?

I'd also like to see a 3-4 week summer camp for exiles - we could base it on the Murrayfield back pitches.

This is a massive source of potential talent for us, and rather than scouting players to bring up to Scottish clubs, or hoping that a talented player can be developed at a foreign club then decide to play for Scotland (amid much hoping and hollering from posters on 606..!), these players could be well and truly part of the Scotland set-up from age 15 onwards.

This would probably be quite expensive to run (I doubt most parents could afford to send little Hamish off north for a month each summer) so the SRU would probably have to foot the bill, but it wouldn’t have to be run on quite the same scale as the national academies. The player development would be taking place at their own clubs, so the camp could simply take the 100 most talented Scotland-qualified players each year and get them playing together. You might find 5-10 players who are good enough to make the step up, but it’s a fairly cheap way of drawing good players northwards.

We could even extend this up to university students - off the top of my head, Ansbro and Danielli both started playing professional rugby after having studied at Oxbridge, and a few of the players in this year’s varsity match were Scotland-qualified.