Carling replaces Belhaven as Murrayfield's beer of choice after row

SCOTTISH rugby has unveiled a new beer sponsorship deal with Carling ahead of the opening Six Nations match on Sunday after it emerged it had lost its previous sponsor in a row with Murrayfield.

Molson Coors, which owns Carling, has signed a three-year, six-figure deal with the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU) to be the official beer sponsor of the sport as well as at Murrayfield Stadium.

This replaces a previous sponsorship with Belhaven, owned by Suffolk-based pubs and brewery group Greene King, as it emerged it ended its three-year sponsorship only a year into the deal.

Euan Venters, managing director of Belhaven, said the SRU's third-party caterer had failed to maintain beer quality: "We very much would like to have a relationship with the SRU. The issue we had was a third party supplied the beer and the quality wasn't good enough. We couldn't be associated with the events when the Belhaven beer wasn't the way we wanted it to be. They were unable to resolve that issue for us."

A spokesman for the SRU denied knowledge of Belhaven's complaint. "We have never had any feedback that there has been a quality issue from any of our sponsors," he said.

But the spokesman did confirm that third-part catering arrangements, managed by SRU subsidiary the Murrayfield Experience, had been switched from stadia catering group Azure to catering giant Sodexo.