TrapperChamonix wrote: ↑April 28th, 2021, 1:47 pm
Glasgow have lost their best (or one of their best) player every year for the last 10 years. That's not a strategic plan, that's lack of funds.
2021 Hastings
2020 Swinson J Gray
2019 Hogg
2018 Russell
2017 Josh Strauss
2016 Nakarawa
2015 Maitland
2014 DTH Van der Merve
2013 Barclay
2012 R Gray J. Beattie
2011
2010 Kelly Brown
If it is a strategic plan, it makes no sense. How anyone invests any time and money into supporting Glasgow is beyond me.
In the same period of time, the only comparable (ie senior players guaranteed to be in 1st team) loss Leinster suffered was Sexton going to Paris for 2 year, not getting an extension for 35 year old Hynes and maybe you could argue about Jack McGrath. All the other losses we have had are about back ups or 3rd choice players.
Playing for Ireland is part of the package that assists retention
You're missing the point. You're appoaching this from the point of view of the Irish system, how it works and what it needs - Scotland isn't part of the Irish system and have their own needs and it makes sense for them.
They don't care about retention, for Scotland, retention isn't a good thing. They only have 46 selection slots each weekend - they aren't going to run a national team on 46 players. Ireland has 92 and this year the provinces will use around 150 players - and some believe thats at the lowest end of what's needed to run a successful national team.
With such limited opportunity, if they retained players, they'd never develop new players - there simply isn't the opportunity for them to play. So they need either more franchises or to move players on. If the absolute epicentre of scottish rugby, the border region, isn't interested in a franchise, then they aren't going to get one anywhere else, so the only option they have is to constantly shift players out to other countries. They still have them for the national team in window, and they have those limited selection slots available for the next generation.
They aren't particularly worried about Glasgow or Edinburgh as entities in and of themselves, they are only interested in them in terms of what they can do for the National team. Yes it's nice when they do well, and every so often a good group of players will come together at the right time and they may be successful, but that is not a goal. The goal is to get those good players into the scottish side and out of the scottish system to let the next group come through. Scotland's history, both in war and in sport (which has replaced war) has always been, literally, mercenary.