THE revelation that the Scottish Rugby Union is thinking of buying the Worcester Warriors’ Rugby Club in England has certainly had plenty of club members and fans scratching their heads over the last couple of months.

The Rucker understands that the reason behind the possible move is that the SRU wants to have a wider professional base for bringing on young players than just the Glasgow Warriors or Edinburgh Rugby or the forthcoming semi professional Super 6 set up, about which a lot of people have still to be convinced.

Only one or two pundits, notably Iain Morrison in Scotland on Sunday and Rob Robertson of the Scottish Daily Mail, have raised issues about the scheme which, to be fair, is very much protected by commercial secrecy – there’s a short list of two bidders for the Sixways club and you don’t want the other chaps know what you’re up to, do you?

Perhaps because of this secrecy, more questions have to be asked of the executives who are promoting the project as you can bet that the spineless SRU Council will just do what it is told as usual.

The biggest questions have to be about the cost of the project and whether it complies with the spirit as well as the wording of the laws and rules of the RFU, the Aviva Premiership and World Rugby.

It could be that the SRU will be able to buy the Warriors on the cheap because it is well known that Worcester is in considerable debt and losing money hand over first – that’s why owner put it up for sale.

The SRU is also in the good position of having made a surplus in recent years and with revenues of £52 million last year the Murrayfield management could justify the investment going forward.

The thing that I would most worry about if I was an SRU director, which thankfully I’m not, would be the reaction of the other clubs in England as well as the other governing bodies in the sport.

No matter how it is dressed up, it will end with the SRU controlling a club in another country and I fail to see how that is going to work.

Could it mean, for instance, an English club or even the RFU buying up our professional clubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh?

I remind you that they are still up for sale, or at least a major investment.

That’s the other thing – what’s the sense of investing elsewhere when you are supposed to be seeking investments in your own clubs?

I am not against the idea of the SRU putting money into English rugby, as they are already doing in France, but we would need a guarantee that as a consequence there would be a return in terms of improving our player base so that the national team continues to thrive for years to come.

The SRU is going to have to sell the idea much better than it has already done and I still cannot see how the scheme can be allowed under the ruling regimes.