Capital Gridiron team - Edinburgh Wolves - bouncing back after player drive

However, many in and around Edinburgh aren't content to just watch – they want to play "America's Game".

Edinburgh Wolves are the Capital's flagship team but they were forced to withdraw from national competition in 2003.

Now, however, the club boasts a practice squad of more than 100 players from all backgrounds. Wolves coach and director of football Don Edmonston said: "In the early 1980s, when Channel 4 televised American Football, there was a huge boom with 23 teams in Scotland, and 50-plus players in each.

"After that massive boom there naturally came a bust – then there were just two teams left but, now the sustainable growth, through youth systems, is good.

"In 2003, the Wolves were forced to withdraw from the league due to a lack of players. We had some injuries and some people retired from the sport, and I was offered position of head coach and director of football. We now have 109 people on the practice squad. We had our best recruitment year this year, and the club is becoming progressively bigger."

Don's remit is to develop the sport across Edinburgh, the Lothians and his native Fife, largely by encouraging sportsmen of school-age to try 'flag football' – similar in principle to touch rugby.

Following the success of a programme promoting this form of American football at James Gillespie's school last year, Don hopes that in five years a fully-fledged inter-school flag league will be in existence.

There hasn't been such an asserted drive to nurture young players in the city since the days of the Scottish Claymores, the team who graced Murrayfield and Glasgow's Hampden Park and won the prestigious World Bowl in 1996.

"There was a lot of interest in the sport when the Claymores were in town, but since they folded, the interest dropped," says Don, himself a former Claymores offensive lineman.

"It was mainly because when NFL Europe was in town, there was a stream of coaches going into schools running coaching courses. When the Claymores left Murrayfield in 2000, all that stopped.

"First and foremost, we try to get the youngsters interested at a young age. We try to get kids to take up the sport by supplying equipment – they don't have to spend any money at all.

"For the senior team, we hold a 'combine' (trial session], testing people's strength, speed and power. That is always really popular. We use Facebook and Bebo, we have a street team who go around doing PR, and we go to the gym finding athletes who are suitable for the sport.

"We also find there are now a lot of cross-sport players interested in American football. We used to only have one rugby player, but we're now in a position where we have many coming down.

"The biggest thing that attracts them is the level of contact. You get the old stories of rugby players who say it's a girls' game with pads and helmets, but the level of contact and the intensity and the way contact is allowed is far higher. It's head-on tackling and the equipment allows you to do that without severe injuries."

For more information log on to the club's website at www.edinburghwolves.com