It was back to rugby business for GROGS at the February Lunch when one of our own, David Jordan, a man steeped in rugby, returned as guest speaker. It was clear he felt at home when he gave ‘shout outs’ to quite a number of the101 hardy souls who had braved the weather to enjoy listening to a man who had experienced the sport of rugby as a player and a top flight administrator with more than 20 years experience. David enjoyed his reminiscences of a career from when he was the only employee of Celtic Rugby to the present time when he is Tour Director of the Pro 14 League which has expanded to a staff of 18 full time employees. David considers himself privileged to be working in the sport he loves and being able to travel the globe in pursuit of contributing to its improvement. He has witnessed matches featuring the top teams and the best players in the world and remains ever grateful for that privilege. His friends say that he hasn’t paid for a match ticket in 2 decades, an accusation he had to confess to being true! In spite of this high rolling life, he still meets up with his local pals of many years standing and described a regular lunch meeting which they dubbed the “Backstabbers Lunch”, in that, if you weren’t there, you were ’it’! It was interesting to hear the differences between the Pro 14 structure and the Premiership structure. They are quite different, as David explained, in both philosophy and objectives which leads to the organisations competing against each other in many ways. He described the playing field as not being a level one but believes Pro 14 punches above its weight and backed up this belief with an impressive array of facts and statistics, including a list of the top managers in international rugby who had cut their teeth in the Celtic leagues. Having a Pro14 Club winning the Premiership remains an ambition as it is the only trophy to elude them thus far. Clearly proud of the Tournament’s achievements, he rattled off an array of dazzling achievements
David dealt with a number of questions well, including a successful handing-off of the most controversial one and was awarded with the much sought after bottle of Famous GROGS whisky.
David dealt with a number of questions well, including a successful handing-off of the most controversial one and was awarded with the much sought after bottle of Famous GROGS whisky.