Hastings sticks up for English clubs
October 07 2008
Former Scotland centre Scott Hastings has openly defended the Guinness Premiership clubs who refused to release their Scottish internationals for national training recently.
Ten Scotland internationals, including captain Jason White, were refused release from their respective clubs for the first Scotland training session of the season.
A subsequent row broke out between the Scotland Rugby Union and the guilty clubs, with the IRB being called in to resolve the matter.
Hastings has now come out and defended the English clubs for their stance.
"Players will only be released five days before an international Test match, not for one-off sessions," he told BBC Sport.
"While the Scottish Rugby Union might complain, that is the law right now."
The current law states that clubs are obliged to release players for international duty just five days prior to the game.
However, the English Rugby Football Union has an additional, voluntary agreement with Premier Rugby whereby it pays to have access to players outside international windows.
"If they want to ask for more release for players then it's up the IRB to step in and work out an infrastructure that allows those players to be released," said Hastings.
"When the English clubs are contracting those players directly, times have changed.
"It used to be the goodwill of the clubs releasing the players. Those times are different in the professional age.
"It seems to hamper the game in terms of its progress. Ultimately, maybe we have to sit down and like an Acas meeting and thrash it out because it doesn't do the image of the game any good."