THE SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS
By Lewis Stuart
The pro team have to get out of Murrayfield, and Meggetland is looking like the best bet, despite some tricky issues. Lewis Stuart reports

IT'S CHRISTMAS, so it's time to consider the plight of the homeless. In this particular case, a tenant that is about to be evicted from its palatial surroundings and is desperately casting about for a little pad they can call their own.

Being Christmas, the story has to have a happy ending, and it will have. But not for another month or so (maybe longer - there is a local council involved). In the end, though, the Edinburgh club will set up their new home at Meggetland, the Boroughmuir club ground. Not this season, though. The ridiculous skewed fixture list of the Magners League means there are only four home league games left after next Friday's clash with Glasgow, so a move before May would cause a lot of problems with little in return.

Meggetland is far from a satisfactory arrangement, since the redevelopment of the stadium was disgracefully mishandled by the City of Edinburgh Council, meaning it lacks basic amenities and anywhere near enough capacity. It is the least bad solution available now that sense has prevailed and Edinburgh have decided to bale out of Murrayfield but the problems will force some games back on the road - there is only so often that "sold out" signs work as a marketing tool.


Both the club and the council have confirmed they are deep in talks about allowing Edinburgh Rugby use the ground for matches apart from the glamour games, some of which may be staged round the corner at Myreside, particularly if arrangements can be made to timetable them for the school holidays.

The big problem for Edinburgh is that while Meggetland is a reasonable short-term answer to their immediate problems, it is also going to have to be their solution for the foreseeable future. Hope had been once pinned on the City of Edinburgh council's plans to build a new stadium at Sighthill but now that project has been scrapped.

The rebuilding of Meadowbank holds out tantalising possibilities but it will be at least March before there is any sign whether the council might be willing to consider a facility there that could stage rugby matches - the early signs are not promising.

In no other country in Europe would this be an issue. Municipal stadiums abound in France, the Ospreys play in one in Wales and local authorities are behind similar projects in Llanelli and Newport, while there is local government money helping the rebuilding of Thomond Park and Donnybrook in Ireland. Only in Scotland do the pathetic denizens of local politics refuse to see beyond the end of their voting slips and spot the value in creating a proper sporting infrastructure.

Not that Nic Cartwright, the Edinburgh chief executive, is downbeat about the project. "Nobody would disagree that we should move most of our games away from Murrayfield," he says. "I look at Scotland playing Romania with 30,000 there and a great atmosphere. Then we have a bit over 3,000 to watch us play Toulouse. To me, Edinburgh v Toulouse in the Heineken Cup is the better game.

"Obviously the Scotland team has much more kudos, but the Heineken Cup is such a great product and Toulouse such a great side, there is no way the difference is 3,000 to 30,000. It is a case of changing perception, and if we can do that, Murayfield would be the right stadium for these big games. At the same time you would be stupid to play Edinburgh v Connacht in the Magners League at Murrayfield."

The disgrace of Meggetland is that it has only recently been rebuilt and anybody with foresight should have seen that it was the perfect opportunity to create a proper home for the rugby club. Instead the council botched the project. So the stand has only 500 seats, which is a problem for a club who have 1,000 season ticket holders with guaranteed seats.

The room for expansion is limited. Space on either side of the stand, that might have been used to expand the capacity, has been filled with walkways, girders or ties. There is terracing on two sides but no permission for temporary stands, and the fourth side has only a few feet of grass between the dead-ball line and a steep drop to the second XV pitch.

That's a pretty big set of issues even before looking at the absence of facilities for television, radio or the written press, the dire state of the playing surface or the need for better floodlights. A little forethought and Meggetland would have been perfect for a club struggling to beat the 3,000 barrier on a regular basis but capable of attracting one-off crowds of 6,000 to 7,000, but that thought never happened.

"We need a home as well," adds Cartwright. "Murrayfield is not a home. The perfect solution would be to find a partner prepared to help build a stadium, but that's not going to happen in the next five years, so we have to find a solution to take the club forward.

"We have visited all the clubs in the city, but the school grounds are all in the same position; we would have an impact on their core business, running a school. It would be impossible to play every fixture at a school ground even before you get to the fact that two of them don't have floodlights.

"There is a willingness to help, though. People do want Edinburgh Rugby to succeed, which is heartening, but there are limits."

So the search for a home will finish at Meggetland and according to sources within the council, the deal could be confirmed in late January or early February. There is still a lot of work to be done and the council have made it clear that they see it as a commercial exchange, not an act of charity, but Edinburgh have no choice. Being genuinely homeless is not an option.

This article was posted on 23-Dec-2007, 09:04 by Hugh Barrow.