AMID reconstruction work at Murrayfield yesterday, with a mechanical

dinosaur grazing on the ground outside the President's Suite, the

Scottish Rugby Union stepped into their own future by launching a new

initiative to draw youngsters into the game. The Scottish Life Young

Scotland Rugby Squad programme should appeal to all youngsters in the

country, girls as well as boys.

Robin Charters, the SRU president, announced that the union will be

ploughing #200,000 in to feed the grass-roots programme over the next

three years. Malcolm Murray, chief general manager of Scottish Life,

added that his company, as sponsors, would be providing another

#100,000.

Even Santa Claus has been enlisted to promote the new club. John

Roxburgh, the SRU's technical administrator, suggested that a squad

membership card could make ''an ideal stocking filler.''

Membership costs #10 per year. Benefits include free admission to SRU

matches such as district championship games and age-group

internationals, and each member will receive a monogrammed Gilbert rugby

ball. Effectively, membership is being given away free as an equivalent

ball costs about #14 in the SRU shop.

Championship internationals, inevitably, have been excluded from the

scope of free admission. Members, though, will be entered in a free draw

for international tickets, and Roxburgh added that the intention is

eventually to invite all members -- even if they are as many as 8000 --

to one of Scotland's other Murrayfield matches.

Members will be eligible to attend player-improvement courses, road

shows, quiz nights, and discos, and they will receive also a badge, a

poster, and a regular magazine. The poster depicts Scott Hastings

beating Will Carling in a Scotland v England match.

Hastings is among six Scottish caps named as honorary members. The

others are Craig Chalmers, Sean Lineen, Andy Nicol, Kenneth Milne, and

Doddie Weir.

Charters explained that the SRU's share of the funding of the

programme has come from the income generated by the licensing of

products such as jerseys and tartan-wear.

This new development, he said, will ''build a strong foundation for

rugby clubs throughout the country and secure future successes of an

ongoing international squad for the years to come.''

Application forms will be available from rugby clubs, branches of the

Dunfermline Building Society, and the SRU, and no lower age limit has

been imposed. New members, Roxburgh suggested, could be enrolled even at

birth.