The ancestral home of rugby sevens, the Scotland Sevens in Edinburgh is close to where rugby sevens was first created and played in the small border town of Melrose in 1883. Since then rugby sevens in Scotland has enjoyed a long and proud history of the sevens game - including the still running Melrose sevens and the 'king of sevens' border series.
It has now been agreed that the Edinburgh rugby sevens tournament will be the last tournament in each series of the IRB's sevens World Series, representing the important role that Scotland played in making such an event possible. Edinburgh was also the venue for the first ever Rugby Sevens World Cup.
The tournament is hosted at Murrayfield each year, the home of the Scottish international rugby team as well as the sevens tournament. Murrayfield is a magnificent stadium, the largest stadium in Scotland, with a capacity for 67,000 rugby fans.
The stadium has, in various guises, been in existence since the Scottish Rugby Union bought and developed the land in 1925, and at one point held the record for the largest ever attendance at a rugby match with 104,000 watching Scotland play Wales in 1975.
As well as providing a home ground for the Scottish national team Murrayfield also plays host to one of the two Scottish rugby sides that compete in the Magners Celtic League, Edinburgh rugby. It has also hosted Rugby World Cup matches, Heineken Cup finals and it will play host to Rugby Leagues 'Millennium magic' weekend in 2009, which had previous been played at Wales' Millennium Stadium.
Despite some rather wet weather the sevens at Murrayfield is always good value for money, and the crowd are always very passionate. As with any Scottish event there is plenty of drink flowing and songs being sung to keep the entertainment up what ever the weather!
The Scottish Sevens tournament, along with the other tournaments in the IRB world sevens series (apart from Hong Kong) has 16 nations competing for the main target of the Cup, with those that lose slipped into the lesser competitions known as (in descending order of merit) the Plate, the Bowl and the Shield.
With such a proud history of rugby and being the birthplace of the seven a side game, the Edinburgh tournament will always have a special place in the IRB sevens calender, and the friendly welcome you always receive in Scotland will mean that many a fan will enjoy his time there.
