Scottish rugby chief insists he HAD to give Mark Dodson huge payout for quitting or he would have ended up in COURT

Scottish Rugby chairman John McGuigan insists he had to pay ex-chief executive Mark Dodson £887,000 for quitting the organisation - because he would have ended up in court otherwise.

Dodson left Scottish Rugby in March after being chief exec since 2011. His massive payment was heavily criticised as the governing body lost £10million in his last year at the helm. But McGuigan, speaking at Scottish Rugby’s annual general meeting, insisted his only real choice was to cough up. He said: “It was pretty straightforward in the sense of that was what he was entitled to legally.

“We have a legal responsibility to pay out his contract. It was agreed in 2022 that we must pay him his notice period. That’s what he got paid. He didn’t get paid anything else.

“The alternative is that we could be taken to court, which we didn’t want to do, because the circumstances were very clear to us. In 2022 the agreement was if Mark was to leave the organisation he was entitled to these things, and that’s what we paid him.”

McGuigan only joined Scottish Rugby in May 2023. And some of the people responsible for that 2022 deal with Dodson have now left the organisation. Ex-Scotland international John Jeffrey was chairman at the time.

At the AGM itself, Keith Wallace of Haddington rugby club was elected president. Hazel Swankie of Dunfermline was elected as vice-president and is on course to become the Union’s second female president.