#rfu

In case y’all were wondering, @onlyoneofyouuuuu @henlex

my rugby position is Prostitute*

*For clarification, the term they were looking for was “Hooker”, named from hooking your foot around the ball to get it out of a scrum

On 21st March 1925 Murrayfield Stadium, the home of Scottish Rugby was opened.

Read the details of that first match which included an English team with a New York born player and a pack that included a Gaelic speaker!

  The first international match was held at Raeburn Place on the cricket field of the Edinburgh Academy in 1871 until the first rugby ground was built in Inverleith in 1879.

It was not until 1922, following debate about moving the game to Hampden and the lease expiry at Inverleith, that a deal was accepted for the 19 acres of land belonging to the Edinburgh Polo Club.

  Murrayfield officially opened its gates on March 21, 1925, with a match against England.

Fans came to the new ground in unprecedented numbers. "The public were badly 'packed': the gates were closed, thousands were turned away; many hundreds ran round the great embankment unable to gain even a glimpse of the pitch

It wasn't just the new stadium that attracted them. It is possible that the first match ever staged by Murrayfield was also the greatest. It matched arguably the best - and almost certainly the most exciting - Scotland XV with an England team whose sustained excellence matched any team in Five/Six Nations history. Scotland had scored 16 tries, including eight from wing Ian Smith, in their previous three matches. England had not lost to Scotland since 1912, and very little to anyone else. That entire period of seven seasons - five more had been lost to the war - had produced five Grand Slams and only two defeats, remarkable hammerings inflicted by Wales at Swansea in 1920 and Cardiff in 1922. 

England were unbeaten in their last 13 championship matches, and another win would give them an unprecedented hat-trick of outright titles.

It was to be a titanic struggle, played out, according to Jock Wemyss, writing in The Times, "on beautiful turf which had never been torn by a swinging maul or cut up by players' studs". William Luddington of England claimed the first points with a penalty goal, but the first try was scored by Scottish scrum-half Jimmy Nelson, who formed a Glasgow Academical half-back pairing with partner Herbert Waddell which attracted less attention than the Scots' all-Oxford three-quarter line, but was no less important. Full-back Dan Drysdale converted and Scotland led, but not for long.

The rumbustious Tom Voyce drove for the Scottish line and created space for pacy wing Richard Hamilton-Wickes to cross. Luddington's conversion made it 8-5 at half-time. That lead was extended not long after half-time when England captain Wavell Wakefield crossed, but the conversion failed under strange circumstances - there was a brief misunderstanding between Luddington and the England player placing the ball, then a required element in every kick at goal, and Scottish forward David McMyn raced from behind the goal-line to kick it away.

Inspired by the let off, and the fear of seeing a great season fizzle out, the Scots attacked and wing Johnny Wallace was sent careering down the touchline for a score which made him the first man to cross in every match in a season. No.8 Sandy Gillies converted and the gap was down to a point.

Scotland continued to attack. With a few minutes to go Waddell narrowly missed with a drop-kick, but was presented with a similar opportunity within little more than a minute and this time hit the target for a score then worth four points, and Scotland led 14-11.

With five minutes to go England attacked furiously. Their New York-born outside-half Edward Myers (typical of a cosmopolitan contest in which three of the Scottish threequarters were antipodean-born and England's pack included Roderick MacLennan, a Gaelic-speaking Scot whom the harrumphing EHD Sewell would say many years later "had no more qualification for England than Goebbels has to bat for Yorkshire") was halted at the line, centre Len Corbett broke through and fell through sheer exhaustion and, after a brutal melee in which Drysdale was kicked in the head, England full-back 'Tosh' Holliday was inches wide with a last-minute drop-goal attempt which would have won the match by a single point.

At the end, Wemyss remembered: "There was the astonishing sight of nearly half of the England team lying on the pitch for almost a minute in a state of exhaustion."

An exultant Glasgow Herald warned that 'It will be the duty of Scotland sides in future years to confirm the Murrayfield precedent'. But it took some confirming. It would be 59 years before Scotland added a second Grand Slam to the one won on their first day at Murrayfield.

In 1927, just two years after opening, the Scottish Rugby Union purchased additional land creating extra pitches and two stands alongside aiding transport with two bridges and a car park.

Due to the Scottish weather posing a threat to matches, in 1959 an electric blanket style cover was laid on the grounds to protect the soil from extreme weather conditions. This lasted for over 30 years but due to recurring maintenance problems was removed in 1991.

This heating method was replaced by a new gas-heated system with hot water pipes under the soil.

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