What’s in new Scottish Rugby chief Alex Williamson’s in-tray and why Oasis can help
CEO can’t wait to ‘crack on’
So welcome to Scottish Rugby, Alex Williamson. There’s good news and there’s bad news.
The organisation is running at a loss of roughly £10.5 million a year. But you’ve got seven Scotland home games in the season ahead and three Oasis concerts next August.
Your mission is to bring the finances under control without embarking on a round of cuts which would threaten the ability of Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors to remain competitive and impact on the national team. You must also represent Scotland’s interests on the world stage and ensure our voice is heard in the corridors of power at World Rugby, the Six Nations, the Lions, the URC etc.
It’s a daunting task but one Williamson, the SRU’s new chief executive, is up for. “I cannot wait to get to Edinburgh and crack on,” he says in the press release announcing his appointment.
But wait he must. The Sussex-based accountant is not due to start at Murrayfield until 2025 which means we will have gone a full year from his predecessor, Mark Dodson, announcing he was stepping down to the new CEO taking over.
The delay is due to the notice period for Williamson’s current job as chief exec of the private equity-owned education provider Inspiring Learning. Once he extricates himself from that he will relocate to Scotland where he will find an overflowing in-tray in his office.
Top of the pile is getting a grip of the finances. The aforementioned 10 big Murrayfield pay-days will help. Who would have thought that the Gallagher brothers burying the hatchet could be such good news for Scottish rugby? Drumming up interest in Scotland v Portugal is a harder sell but the other autumn internationals, against South Africa, Australia and Fiji, will have the turnstiles clicking, as will three home games in the Six Nations.
John McGuigan, the overworked Scottish Rugby chairman, warned in May that the financial picture would get worse before it got better. The governing body reported losses of £10.5m for the financial year to May 2023 and it’s the same story 12 months later. He believes things will improve significantly in 2024-25 and by 2025-26 is hopeful the organisation should be back in profit. Key to this, said McGuigan, was driving up the revenue and the aspirational figure is £100m per year. Given that revenue reached record levels of £68.3m in the last set of published results, that is a tall order and one of Williamson’s first jobs will be to appoint a new chief financial officer.
Stemming the losses is key but that usually means cuts and the spectre of redundancies hangs over Murrayfield. One of Williamson’s more high profile previous jobs was CEO of House of Fraser where he had to embark on a round of store closures and redundancies as the business lurched into administration. No-one is suggesting a similar fate awaits Scottish Rugby but Williamson, 50, knows savings have to be made.
The pro teams operate with annual budgets of £8m each and, in the case of Glasgow Warriors, the investment paid off with their stunning success in the URC. Edinburgh continue to underachieve but they have beefed up their squad and coaching staff for the new season.
A longer-term problem is the flow of youthful, native talent into a men’s national side which over relies on imported players. The appointment last month of David Nucifora in a “performance advisory role” is designed to address that by putting in place new strategies to develop young players.
Williamson and Nucifora will cross over but, broadly speaking, the CEO will manage the cost base while Nucifora runs the rugby.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.