Edinburgh RugbyEdinburgh Rugby are one of three professional rugby union teams in Scotland, The Borders and Glasgow Rugby being the other two. They play at Meadowbank (capacity 6,500), their captain is Todd Blackadder. Their nickname is The Gunners. When the Heineken Cup was suggested SRU officials were concerned that Scottish club sides could not compete against the best teams from France and England and that districts might do better. The four traditional districts - the Borders, Edinburgh, Glasgow and the North & Midlands (rebranded as Caledonia) - were given the go-ahead to take part in Europe. For the first two seasons, players were still released to play for their clubs in domestic competition, but eventually the districts became full-time operations. Then financial difficulties - the SRU’s high debt, partly as a result of the redevelopment of Murrayfield - called for retrenchment. After two seasons, financial difficulties forced the Union to merge the four teams into two. Edinburgh merged with the Border Reivers to form a team to be known as Edinburgh Reivers. From the 2002/3 season the Reivers label was dropped and the team were simply known as Edinburgh Rugby. The issue of crowd sizes returned at the 1999 World Cup, by which time a Welsh/Scottish League had been established - essentially the Welsh First Division with the two Scottish sides tacked on. The Celtic League, begun in the autumn of 2001, has been a more attractive competition for players and public alike. Edinburgh's best achievement to date has been to make the final of the 2003/4 Celtic Cup and to make it out of the group stages of the 2003/4 Heineken Cup. See alsoExternal links
Categories: Scottish sport | Celtic League teams |
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