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.
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