Mark Dodson paints rosy picture but will leave Scottish rugby in a frayed state

According to the outgoing chief executive, the national squad is the strongest we’ve had in the professional era, the two pro teams are in good shape and attracting record crowds, there are two new semi-pro women’s teams and “tremendous progress” has been made on the governance structure.

It is, he said, the right time to go and he will take his leave this summer after 13 years at the helm. But scratch beneath the surface and the reality is starkly different.

Scotland returned early from the men’s World Cup, eliminated at the pool stage for the second time in a row; the national under-20 side are languishing in the sport’s second division, unable to beat minnows Uruguay and Gregor Townsend is left to lament the lack of native talent coming through as he scours the globe looking for Scottish-qualified contenders.

It is now 25 years since Scotland won the final Five Nations Championship and the closest they’ve come since is to finish third in the expanded competition. Glasgow Warriors’ Guinness Pro12 success in 2015 remains the only major trophy won by our pro teams, although the Scotstoun club did reach the final of the European Challenge Cup last season.

Dodson said he would leave it to others to judge his tenure and it’s hard to escape the feeling that, for all his optimism, Scottish rugby continues to struggle just to keep its head above water.

No-one could pretend it’s an easy job and his surprise resignation announcement on Friday could signal a significant change in the way the sport is run in this country. In the short term, it means the SRU is now looking for two key players at the top of the tree. As well as chief executive, there is also a vacancy for a performance director, with Jim Mallinder also due to step down in June this year. The latter’s departure follows the under-20 team’s travails, with the main “pipeline” for supplying the senior squad having all but dried up. Townsend expressed disquiet last year that no players were making the transition from under-20s to the full Scotland team.

Despite the compelling evidence, Dodson rebutted suggestions that the grassroots game had been neglected in favour of concentrating resources on the elite level.

“I think the foundations are in good shape,” he said in a briefing with journalists. “If you look at what we're trying to do: create role models, create winning teams, then build a stadium that creates money and a flow of cash that can be reinvested in the rest of the game.

“We invest a huge amount of money into grassroots rugby and will continue to do that. I think the new pathway system we’re working on as part of our 10-year strategic plan will correct some of the weaknesses in the pathway, and we can all look for things improving across the piece.

“If you look at the way our pro teams are playing, look at the crowd last week when we had 37,000 people [to watch Edinburgh v Glasgow], there is an enormous amount of good news out there and I’m confident we’ll go from strength to strength.”

Dodson is leaving his post a year ahead of schedule. The contract he signed in 2022 was due to expire in June 2025 but he said it made sense to go at the start of the next World Cup cycle. He sees no contradiction between that and the decision last year to award a new contract to Townsend which runs until April 2026, 18 months before the 2027 World Cup in Australia.

“You’ve got to remember that Gregor has been involved for a long period of time, and this takes him to the midway point in the cycle so gives him the opportunity to drive forward to 2027 and beyond, but also gives him the flexibility if he doesn’t want to stay on he can move away,” said Dodson. “He is an outstanding coach and remains an outstanding coach and he is in place till 2026 so in reality he is carrying the torch for the team and driving us forward for the next few years.”

He was characteristically bullish about the problems at under-20 level and continued to peddle the narrative that this current Scotland squad is the strongest seen in the pro era.

“If you look at the last 20 to 25 years, we have players coming through in clusters, then we don’t have players coming through, then they come through in clusters again,” said Dodson. “The fact of the matter is you probably only need three, four, five players coming through to the pro teams at any one time out of the under-20s. But we are still producing phenomenal talent if you look at some of the kids coming through the age-grade system now – first class players. Of course we would like more, and of course we would like a conveyor belt, but you’ve got to be realistic about what Scotland can produce with its player numbers and also its pro franchise system.

“If you look at the squad we’ve got currently at the moment, it is probably the most powerful and deep squad we’ve had in the professional era. Now, that will continue because players will come through. There may be a couple of barren years, but players will come through and players will qualify for Scotland, so I’m in no doubt we’re in good stead.”

Dodson batted away any chat about his legacy and whether his handsome salary had represented value for money. A straight talker who has never appeared to care overly much about what people think of him, Dodson’s bluntness has been a strength and a weakness. His handling of the Siobhan Cattigan case was unedifying and needlessly stubborn and it took the arrival of John McGuigan as chair last year for Scottish Rugby to do the decent thing and apologise to the family of the late Scottish international.

On the credit side, Dodson’s leadership steered the sport through difficult Covid times and he also helped negotiate the multi-million pound Six Nations and URC deals with private equity firm CVC which he described yesterday as “life-savers” for rugby.

He also fought Scotland’s corner at the Japan World Cup in 2019 when it looked like the national side might be eliminated without playing the hosts in their final group game due to Typhoon Hagibis. He was heavily criticised in some quarters given the death toll caused by the typhoon and he acknowledged yesterday that you “have to have a thick skin” as he reflected on his time in charge.

“People are not going to believe you all the time,” he said. “You have to take decisions that sometimes are unpopular and sometimes create some discord. The truth of the matter is you have to stick to the task and drive things through.

“And I’ve never been worried about this being a popularity contest, and most of the guys on this call have known me for a long time – I never complain and I never explain. At the end of the day I’m not explaining how I feel or anything else, I just take it and I drive on, because that’s what the leader of an organisation has to do.

“If you talk to the people that work with me closely, talk to my colleagues around the rugby business, in Europe and the world, they probably have a different view of me than the way the Scottish public see me. But that’s for other people to judge. I’m very happy with the way I’ve gone about my time in Scottish rugby, and as I’ve said before it’s been an utter privilege.”