Rugby: Great result… and the scoreline is special too

IF YOU had said to most rugby pundits and fans at the start of 2011-12 that before the end of the season, Murrayfield would play host to a club match in front of more than 37,000 fans, they would surely have laughed at you.

The national side’s failure in the group stages at the World Cup and the relatively poor performances in recent years of the two professional sides, Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby, in Europe’s top tournament the Heineken Cup, meant little expectation of success. On 7 April, however, Edinburgh made a little bit of history by beating Toulouse at Murrayfield to become the first Scottish club to reach the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup and will face Ulster today in Dublin in a bid to reach the final at Twickenham next month.

Everyone who attended that memorable quarter-final at Murrayfield was part of another piece of history – the 37,881 spectators in the national stadium was, by some distance, the largest crowd ever for a Scottish club game.

“It could have been more if we had drawn Newcastle or Ulster or Munster with their large travelling support,” says Craig Docherty, chief executive of Edinburgh Rugby. “There were only a few hundred fans from Toulouse. With a different opponent, and on a different weekend other than Easter when folk were away for a break, we could have gone close to filling the stadium.”

The event was not just a triumph for the players and the coaching staff, but for the backroom crew without whom any professional sports club cannot operate.

Docherty is, therefore, well-placed to comment on what makes for a successful integration of the business and commercial operation with the playing side of the game, and he sums it up in one word – results.

“It was a big event for us to organise, but our main focus was to get to the semi-final,” says Docherty. “As we said to the coaches and players, the whole point of us getting the ticket strategy right, marketing and working hard to get a decent-size crowd was so that the fans would act as an extra man to help get us to the semi-final.

“It was good that the plan came together, and now that we are in the semi, the whole point is to get to the final. This is a results-driven business, and we want to win the cup. What we have achieved so far has given us all a great lift, and it has also given the profile of professional rugby in Scotland a real shot in the arm.”

Docherty feels the progress of Edinburgh in the Heineken Cup and Glasgow, Warriors in the RaboDirect pro-12 league can make a real difference to Scottish rugby.

He explains: “Everyone understands that rugby goes from mini and midis through the schools and clubs and then jumps to the national team, but the void in the middle is the two clubs where the majority of the players in the national side play week in and week out.

“The Scottish public hasn’t yet fully bought into the professional game, but hopefully this season will be a catalyst for Glasgow and Edinburgh – you’ve got to be winning though.”

An accountant by profession, and a former Glasgow High and Glasgow Hawks player, Docherty started in business in Hong Kong before moving from the commercial operation of the SRU to take over Edinburgh Rugby. He sees his role as bringing commercial stability to Edinburgh Rugby with schemes such as the successful Business Club which started last year

He emphasises again what the professional game needs – “results.” A win for Edinburgh today would be the best result he could see.