April 23, 2003

Nicol wants Dixon kept in the frame

Posted by Editor on April 23, 2003 04:05 PM | No comments | Print | E-mail author
Andy Nicol has called on Murrayfield bosses to consider keeping caretaker coach Richie Dixon in charge for next season to help revitalise the club. Since Kiwi Searancke's sacking at the beginning of this month and Dixon's return, Nicol believes the mood in the camp has been transformed.

With the leading candidates for the vacant head coach's job being interviewed today, Nicol believes that an extension to Dixon's caretaker role could help reinvigorate the squad.

"A managerial post is being advertised as well so that could kill two birds with one stone. It would be a great way to develop two young coaches to have a mentor like Richie in place," Nicol told Kevin Ferrie in The Herald.

Sean Lineen has been widely expected to be appointed backs coach for some time. Ian Paxton and Glasgow Hawks coach Shade Munro seem the likeliest of the forwards coaches in the club game to be considered.

However, Nicol acknowledged that the man who has emerged as the favourite for the post - to the point of having been forced last week to deny claims that he has already been given it - could also do an excellent job.

"I think Hugh Campbell would be good for Glasgow as well," he said of the Scotland A head coach and Scotland forwards coach. "However, if the professional teams are being used for developing international players, they should be used for developing international coaches as well."

The Kevin Ferrie article went on to say that this makes the timing particularly difficult for Campbell. Ian McGeechan, Scotland's coach, indicated last summer that he wanted to let Campbell prove himself as a head coach, staying in San Francisco with the remainder of the party to allow his assistant to take charge of the midweek team when they beat the US's second team in Portland during last summer's North American tour. Campbell was subsequently appointed head coach of the A team which beat Romania and Fiji in the autumn but failed to register another win during the Six Nations campaign.

However, six years after he was forwards coach on Scotland's 1997 development tour of South Africa and five years after being called into the senior set-up for the tour of Australia under Jim Telfer, surely if Campbell - now into his fifties - is ever to be Scotland coach it must be this time around, when McGeechan moves upstairs after the summer's World Cup.

If, however, he is not a future national coach, his appointment would merely block one of what are very few opportunities for aspiring young Scottish coaches.

Short-term, meanwhile, he is due to be a part of McGeechan's World Cup coaching team, so his appointment to the Glasgow job would inevitably cause disruption within one set-up or the other.

Considering the attention paid to bringing the right people into Edinburgh - Todd Blackadder, Brendan Laney, Scott Murray - and the Borders - Tony Gilbert, Gary Armstrong, Gregor Townsend - it is vital for the morale of players and supporters at once-vibrant Glasgow that they are not made to feel like poor relations.

Given his dual role at Glasgow and at Murrayfield, Dixon was understandably cagey on the subject yesterday, but did not rule out the possibility of continuing in a caretaker capacity having now had a year of focusing on his coach development role, during which he believes several promising talents have emerged.

"If it was felt that we should have someone like me to do that then it perhaps is an option," he said. "However, if I was involved I would still have to be in a position to work with other coaches because we are now beginning to see some of our structures such as our Pathway system, the Scottish Sports Institute and our academies as well as the Premier clubs affording real opportunities for coaches."

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