AFTER months of deliberation, the Scottish Rugby Union's plans for a Super Six tournament next season, with the clubs involved sending their amateur second strings into the National League, have been given the go-ahead in a special general meeting at Murrayfield.
That means no performance-based relegation from this season's Premiership. Six teams from the top tier and six from the second will instead swap places while the new semi professional Super Six tier is added above all that.
In the end, the SRU's proposals were voted through comfortably with the only remotely close decision being on what to call the competitions – the clubs voted through an amendment demanding that the current Premiership and National League titles should be specifically retained.
That was not to say there was no heated discussion, in particular a spat between Bill Faulds from Falkirk and Lorne Boswell from Stirling County over a proposal that the Super Six second strings should be sent straight down to a reserve team league.
According to Boswell, whose club is one of those going into the Super Six, that would have affected teams at all levels and would have amounted to restraint of trade that would probably end in litigation.
"I don't appreciate being threatened," Faulds snapped back before reaffirming his backing for the motion he had proposed in the first place.
Probably more of an influence on the rest of the special general meeting was the implied threat from Dee Bradbury, the SRU president, and Gavin McColl, chairman of the governance working party who had put forward the proposal, was that if the amendment passed, they could withdraw the original motion and leave the status quo – Super Six clubs in both the new tier and the Premiership.
There were twin worries for Faulds and his supporters: the knock-on effect on smaller clubs as players were hoovered up by "super hubs" to feed two teams; and the safety aspect of potentially allowing semi professional players not needed for the Super Six sides to play against less fit players in a lower division.
He was supported by Simon Berghan from Preston Lodge, again emphasising safety and the knock-on effect of player migration, but opposed from the platform by both McColl and Bradbury as well as Boswell from the floor.
In the end the vote against the amendment was so clear cut they did not need to go to a secret ballot.
The council carried the floor even more overwhelmingly when Keith Wallace of Haddington proposed that the new Super Six second strings in the National league should be forced to stay there for at least three years – an idea, McColl pointed out, which could have meant promotion for the club that finished seventh in the division.
The effect of the meeting was to clear the way for the Super Six proposal from the SRU to go ahead pretty much in the from originally put forward last year. The top tier clubs have all signed their agreements and hired coaches for next season while behind the scenes they are starting to recruit players. Now they know that they need enough to feed two teams playing at different levels.
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