As Blair Cowan expressed his bitter disappointment at having failed to make rugby history there was a chastening reminder of Scotland’s reliance on overseas support to try to become more competitive on the global stage.
“I had family travel out for 30 hours on a flight for three days and they’re travelling back tomorrow,” observed the flanker who, along with fellow native New Zealander John Hardie made such a huge contribution to the team’s narrow failure to shock Australia.
The quality of these players, both of whom have been discovered to be “Scottish” at the age of 27, as well as that of Zimbabwean Dave Denton and South African Josh Strauss, is beyond dispute and in terms of strength in depth and competition for back-row places they have clearly made a difference sine the homegrown ‘Killer Bs’ combination of John Barclay, John Beattie and Kelly Brown was in its pomp.
However the on-going dependence on imported talent highlights serious issues regarding what has been happening with the domestic development of rugby players.
It was wholly understandable when the Scottish Rugby Union was caught on the hop 20 years ago by the decision of the sport to go open, that a weak talent pool needed to be supplemented by taking advantage of eligibility rules to bring in an entire antipodean back-row of Marty Leslie, Gordon Simpson and Andrew Mower, plus Leslie’s brother John as well as the likes of Glenn Metcalfe, Brendan Laney and Shaun Longstaff to supplement the back-line.
Since then, however, there has been an opportunity to develop a whole generation of players and with vast sums having been invested in that process the continued dependence on so many imports is a major cause for concern.
Yet the rave reviews repeatedly emerging from the rugby hotbed of Llanelli about the performances of John Barclay, one of the aforementioned ‘Killer Bs’, suggests that Scotland has not failed completely to live up to the legacy of David Leslie, the Calder twins, John Jeffrey, Derek White, Iain Paxton and John Beattie snr.
"John gives us a great service across the back row as he plays equally as well at 7, 6 or 8. Despite playing half the season in the number 8 position he was still named in the top three players for turnovers in the Pro12 last season. He's a leader on the field and a leader in our group,” Wayne Pivac, head coach of the Pro12 leading Scarlets said last week in expressing his delight at keeping the former Glasgow Warrior, who has been captaining his side since being left out of Scotland’s World Cup plans, in Wales for another two years.
Like Vern Cotter, Scotland’s coach, Pivac is a Kiwi but having seen Barclay’s strengths close up he perhaps has a better understanding of the player’s qualities, along with any failings that need to be worked upon.
The difficulty for the likes of Cotter and Scotland’s Australian director of rugby Scott Johnson, who had charge of the national squad when Cowan was introduced, may be that the limited amount of time available to work with international squads makes it a quicker fix to introduce a player whose skills fit their eyes in terms of what is required in a particular position and their vision of how they want their teams to play.
Scotland got in a mess at the last World Cup because of a similar problem when, concerned about the way the front five was performing, Andy Robinson dropped his captain Al Kellock in favour of Jim Hamilton, an English-style, if not England-quality second row forward.
Robinson’s regime never recovered from that failed campaign and he departed a year later following a defeat from Tonga which, admittedly, leans towards another consideration during this first ever World Cup not to have a European team in the semi-finals, which is that the rugby development work being done in this part of the world may simply be so inferior that a second or third-rate Australian, New Zealander or South African will for the foreseeable future, be better than the best homegrown players.
If so it is hard to see how Scotland can hope to overcome these countries, while it is little consolation that, with the next World Cup taking place in the Southern Hemisphere, the journey time may be a bit easier on friends and relatives of some of the national squad.
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