My gut reaction after coming away from John Jeffrey’s dramatic press conference at the Braid Hills Hotel in Edinburgh last Wednesday was total surprise that the Scottish Rugby Union did not back his bid to become the next chairman of World Rugby.
Their rejection of his candidacy has the world of rugby laughing at the SRU while internally it must have created a rift among senior figures at Murrayfield.
Scottish Rugby’s new performance director David Nucifora and new chief executive Alex Williamson will be wondering what kind of organisation they have joined.
The chance to have one of their own in one of the top jobs in world sport would be a major coup, not just for Scottish rugby but for the whole country. It would have been a big deal.
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After spending the last few days looking into the background to Jeffrey’s rejection I am doubling down on my opinion that he has been harshly treated. I also believe the Scottish Rugby Union Custodian Board – the group that refused to back Jeffrey’s candidacy – has questions to answer.
To begin with let’s deal with the facts. Jeffrey was the vice-chairman of World Rugby and was running to be chairman in place of Sir Bill Beaumont who steps down in November. He had a good chance of succeeding him and becoming the most powerful man in world rugby. A Scot at the top. That would have been good but was not to be.
When Jeffrey found out that the SRU would not back him, he resigned as vice-chairman of World Rugby and withdrew from the campaign to be the new chairman with immediate effect. Not having the support of his home Union torpedoed his candidacy.
Scottish Rugby is run by two different internal boards. There is the Scottish Rugby Union Custodian Board that represents Scotland’s amateur clubs and the grass-roots game. That is chaired by Lorne Crerar. They were only set up in November 2022 after a governance review. Jeffrey opposed them being set up.
Then there is the Scottish Rugby Limited Board, the body tasked with running the professional operational side of the Scottish game on a daily basis and is chaired by John McGuigan. They backed Jeffrey. The Custodian Board is looked on by many as the more powerful of the two internal bodies and are there to scrutinise how the Scottish Rugby Limited Board perform.
So why did the Custodian Board refuse to back the man who was part of the 1990 Grand Slam-winning team and why did they lead him up the garden path only to close the gate on him at the last minute?
They would argue they never told him they were backing him at any stage, while Jeffrey thought they had given him general backing to stand. After all they were his home union.
Some Custodian board members didn’t think he did a good job when he was chairman of the Scottish Rugby Board Limited from 2020 to April 2023 when he stood down to concentrate on his campaign to become World Rugby chairman. He was replaced by McGuigan.
Some felt he was too close to former Scottish Rugby chief executive Mark Dodson who was the highest paid official in the history of the SRU when both were in office at the same time.
With bonuses, in one year Dodson earned more than £900,000 and that put a lot of noses out of joint.
They also felt Dodson was autocratic and pushed through, without enough consultation, the semi-professional Super6 semi-pro league which was wound up over the summer
They believed Dodson and Jeffrey badly handled the death of former Scotland international Siobhan Cattigan and didn’t apologise quickly enough. They were also concerned that spending levels were rising on their watch.
At his 40-minute press conference Jeffrey accepted all these matters could have been handled better and admitted he had made mistakes on his watch.
The question is though why didn’t anybody within the SRU take him to task publicly at the time?
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I spoke to Jeffrey in France during the 2023 World Cup when he launched his campaign to succeed Beaumont. He called it his “1,000-day action plan’’ as he was only going to stand for one four-year term.
He assumed his home union was behind him as he wouldn’t have put himself out there if they hadn’t been.
The way the SRU have handled questions about Jeffrey’s comments is also puzzling.
Scottish Rugby has an established media department with Matt Horler head of communications. He takes care of the big stuff.
It doesn’t come much bigger than a former Scotland international claiming he was “betrayed” by the powers that be at Murrayfield.
Yet when I spoke to Horler, who is a vastly experienced media operator and could easily have handled the matter if allowed, he said he would not be dealing with any response from the Custodian Board. He was only dealing with questions put to Scottish Rugby Limited.
He referred me to Alex Barr of the BIG Partnership, who is one of the UK’s most successful public relations men and was handling matters for the Scottish Custodian Board. Why two different PRs for groups within the same sporting organisation?
Maybe the SRU Custodian Board are hoping the matter blows over by not saying anything and they could be right. I know some within Murrayfield felt the Scotland Rugby News coverage in particular was so thorough that there is nothing left for them to say.
That could be the case but there is long-term damage from this to Scottish Rugby both internally and externally.
I have spoken to rugby people from all round the world who can’t understand why the SRU won’t back their own man. They are laughing at Scottish Rugby all the way from Melbourne to Buenos Aires.
It also begs the question how will the Scottish Rugby Limited Board chaired by McGuigan interact with the Scottish Rugby Custodian Board chaired by Crerar in future?
They had different views on whether Jeffrey should be backed. There is every chance they could clash again.
The two-tier administrative set-up within the SRU may have been brought in with the best intentions to keep a check on those running Scottish Rugby but it should never have come to this.
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