Talk about a dose of the Monday blues. As if the Six Nations defeat to Ireland at the weekend wasn’t painful enough, the news that Jack Dempsey is heading off to Japan was another hammer blow to all involved with Scotland and Glasgow Warriors.
Dempsey will leave Scotstoun at the end of the season after five highly successful years with the Warriors, during which time he won a URC title, to pursue a fresh start in the Far East. That’s the diplomatic version.
The more blunt version would state that those in charge at Glasgow and Scottish Rugby have botched this whole deal and lost one of their best players.
Only a couple of months ago, there was a broad agreement from all parties that terms would be agreed and Dempsey’s contract would be renewed beyond the end of the season. A verbal agreement was in place.
But those talks eventually broke down due to the length of the deal being offered. Money was only part of the equation. Dempsey would happily have stayed at Glasgow, but he didn’t feel particularly valued.
There are two sides to that coin, of course. Why would the SRU roll out a lucrative long-term contract for a player who turns 32 next month and whose injury record is a bit patchy?
Scotland international Jack Dempsey has agreed a deal to move to Japan in the summer
But, perhaps more pertinently, why was Dempsey’s existing deal allowed to expire just over a year out from a World Cup?
He has been firmly established as one of Scotland’s key players for several years now, going all the way back to when he made his debut in 2022.
He joined Glasgow in 2021 and, having established himself as a firm fans’ favourite, he duly signed a two-year extension in 2023. The option of a third year was always likely to be triggered.
Well, that third year is now coming to a close and Dempsey has decided that his future lies elsewhere. More than anything, that’s just poor planning from Scottish Rugby.
Knowing that he had become a key player with plenty of suitors abroad, making sure his contract runs parallel to the World Cup cycle would have made far more sense.
But this now presents the very distinct possibility that Gregor Townsend will lose a key piece of the jigsaw in just over a year out from the World Cup.
Dempsey could still play in Scotland’s Nations Championship matches against Argentina, South Africa and Fiji in the summer.
But his involvement in their autumn matches against Australia, New Zealand and Japan, as well as next year’s Six Nations, is in serious doubt.
Scotland would have to strike some kind of release deal that would see than pay a fee to Dempsey’s new club in Japan. Even then, it would still be difficult with the logistics and travel involved.
They would also open themselves up to being half ransom. Dempsey’s new club in Japan would hold all the aces in any negotiations.
Would Scotland really be willing to pay money to release Dempsey if they weren’t even willing to cough up the cash for a longer contract in the first place?
This is a hammer blow for Townsend. But, at club level, this will also place a further strain on Smith’s relations with those in charge of Scottish Rugby.
During his time in charge at Scotstoun, Smith has been consistently outspoken about the resources made available to him in terms of the budget.
Especially when Henco Venter and Sebastian Cancelliere, two proven league winners, left last season, Smith made his feelings clear, saying: ‘If it was up to me, they would definitely stay.’
Since then, it has also been announced that Huw Jones and Adam Hastings are also heading off to pastures new in France with Toulon and Montpellier respectively.
In the case of Jones, a world-class centre in the prime of his career at 32 years old, the economic realities of playing in France as opposed to Scotland rendered that move inevitable.
Likewise Hastings. Similar to Jones, he is now coming to the end of his second spell with Glasgow, and will now have the chance of a nice payday in France.
But look at this from Smith’s point of view. It was on his watch with Glasgow that Jones started to combine with Sione Tuipulotu a few years back. ‘Huwipulotu’ was his creation, and the national team benefited from it.
Huw Jones, left, is another top Scottish talent who is leaving Glasgow Warriors later this year
Hastings has also been good for Glasgow this season. At 29, he is maturing nicely into a top-level fly-half. But he’s off in the summer.
Smith has helped these players develop and take their game on to a new level, only to then see them fly the nest.
Maybe that’s part of the deal when you coach Glasgow. But the Dempsey situation feels different. It should have been wholly avoidable.
Scottish Rugby can’t expect Smith to keep on working miracles every season with increasingly diminished resources.
He has proven himself to be a top-class coach. Whether or not he should have been promoted to the Scotland job by now is neither here nor there.
The point is that Scottish Rugby are doing nothing to entice Smith to stay. They are not doing enough to keep some of his top players, whilst not exactly providing him with a big budget to bring new talent in.
Eventually, he will get fed up of having to operate with one hand tied behind his back. Given his comments on some of the players who have left previously, Smith is bound to be peeved off at the nature of Dempsey’s exit.
