Brewer puzzled by Scotish negativity

The Herald - Wednesday, November 04, 2009 2:54 PM

MIKE Brewer, the former All Black flanker, who is helping the Fijians prepare for their meeting with the Andy Robinson’s Scotland at Murrayfield next Saturday, has questioned the negativity which he claims surrounds the sport in Scotland.

Brewer puzzled by negativity

Brewer, who gained 32 caps for New Zealand between 1986 and 1995 and was a member of Frank Hadden’s coaching staff at Murrayfield, has no doubts Fiji will face a stern test when they travel to Edinburgh next week, but believes cultural factors are holding back the game in Scotland.

“It’s not for me to say how the people of Scotland should approach life and whether they are a glass-half-empty society, but
I do know, from playing the game a bit, that it does affect your mindset when there is negativity across the board,” said Brewer.

“It’s like the teacher at school who continually rubbishes you at a subject, in which case how well does the student prepare and how hard does the student try in his exam?

“The issue for me is that this negativity has resulted in lower expectations from the public and the press and that invariably rubs off on some of the players.

"You always hear about ‘belief’ in sport but, if expectations are low across the board, the elite competitive athletes will always end up having lower expectations than others from a differing culture.

“The Scots have a very good core squad, but the concern that [national coach] Andy [Robinson] and his management team have is a lack of strength in depth at the elite international level.

“I experienced that last year when we lost Nathan [Hines] and Euan [Murray] at the beginning of the Six Nations Championship.

The players who came in did very well, but they are just not as good or as experienced as these two, and playing Test rugby is quite different to a Magners League game.”

Having recently returned to the Southern Hemisphere, Brewer and his fellow coaches have been tasked with myriad logistical problems raised by members of the Fiji squad being scattered across the world.

Yet, while that situation has created difficulties, he is convinced the Pacific Islanders have the quality to become a major force in the next decade, particularly if they receive help from the IRB.

“We do not have the luxury of calling training camps [such as those held by Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales], but that is something that countries like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Italy and Argentina will always have to deal with, because market forces mean the best players will always gravitate towards the best domestic and highest-paying competitions in the world,” he said.

“There is no use in Fiji trying to fight this economic dynamic. The answer is how best to get round these constraints.

“The long-term objective is for us to gain admission to the current Tri-Nations [New Zealand, Australia and South Africa] event, which will soon become a four-nation competition [with the entry of Argentina in 2012].”

As someone who showed interest in coaching Scotland when Frank Hadden left, Brewer is clearly relishing an imminent battle with Robinson’s team.

Given his pedigree, it would be folly to underestimate him or Fiji.