Sports Calendar

They recently announced some figures in Scotland that purported to show a major revolution in the sport north of the border, with increased numbers playing the game and watching the professional teams.

All very fine, although if you delved beneath the figures you found that, basically, Jock McTavish and his mate had started to play rugby for someone's under-13s and that Jimmy Stewart has agreed to go to watch Edinburgh now and again provided it's not raining.

Still, good luck to them, a Scotland rugby revival is the next key to the well-being of the RBS Six Nations and even small rises are turning a tide. And, in my opinion, that revival came a little closer last week when it was announced that Gregor Townsend, the former Scotland back, had joined Frank Hadden's coaching set-up - this after an odd period when Townsend seemed to have been banished to the outer limits.

The choice is superb. I have always regarded Townsend as a genius, although not without flaws. He didn't pick the best time to be born, since his deftness, passing, ability to put people into space and all-round expertise were somewhat wasted. Those outside him in the Scotland teams for which he played between 1993 and 2003 were not on his wavelength, some were not even on the same planet.

Look what happened when they gave him players to bounce off - he was able to marshal the 1997 Lions to victory in South Africa. A career that took him to Northampton, Brive and Castres also gave him a wider vision. I used to love watching him end on, to see him work his angles. His wisdom and modest manner could well herald a revival in Scotland back play and something better in terms of the scoreboard. Those are the numbers that really matter.

Banished! The 30,000

Has there ever been a body in sport like the Irish Rugby Football Union? I may have this wrong, but it seems that the movers and shakers (or in fact, the non-movers and never-awakers) on the IRFU have been there since doomsday.

It is amazing how many officials in Ireland (and elsewhere) ranted and raved about the evils of professionalism, swore to defend amateurism as a sacred thing, and then kept right on going after the game went pro and started getting paid for their posts. High principle? Second to agreeable trips and profile, some might say.

The latest IRFU horror? Lansdowne Road is being rebuilt and while it has been off-stream, matches have been played at Croke Park, an absolutely magnificent stadium owned by the Gaelic Games Association (a body that makes the IRFU look like a bunch of dynamic go-ahead revolutionaries, by the way).

Croke has its drawbacks. Yes, at the start, it was great to read all that stuff about how they were against allowing in this English sport and the dire stories of the black-and-tans opening fire. There was hardly a hard-liner from the old days with some connection to the Troubles who wasn't wheeled out to add their suspicions of rugby and England to the pile. Lads, you have to say after chapters nine, ten and 11 of this historical enmity stuff, just take the money and move on, for god's sake.

Recently, with a supreme irony, the GAA have been brightly harping on about extending the tenure of rugby, and opening up the ground to all and sundry - at precisely the same time that the IRFU has stated, baldly (though not boldly) that when Lansdowne is finished, it will stage all Ireland Tests till kingdom come.

The capacity of Croke Park is 80,000. The capacity of the new Lansdowne is 50,000. That means that for every game that Ireland ever play, 30,000 followers who would have wanted to attend, will be banished. What a triumph! What a blow struck for the marketing of rugby. What a miserable state of affairs. And farewell forever to any notion that Ireland could ever stage a World Cup final. Even minuscule old Eden Park in Auckland is bigger than that.