This Is Murrayfield … and it is 100 years old today
Yesterday at 06:13 AM
100 years ago today, Murrayfield opened her gates for the very first time as England came to town for the final match of Scotland's 1925 Five Nations campaign. It is a landmark of such significance that my great friend, the esteemed journalist and playwright Rob Robertson, suggested that we should write a book about it. Over the course of 2024 we curated 100 matches that we felt were among the most significant, or interesting, in the stadium's history – and to really bring it to life, we interviewed dozens and dozens of players and coaches who had been involved in those games, from both the home side and the opposition. This is Murrayfield: 100 Years of History in 100 Games was the result – and we're very proud of it.
Since the first international in 1871, Scotland's home games had been played at Raeburn Place and then Inverleith, but by the early 1920s the demand for tickets had far outgrown the latter's capacity. After plans to build a second stand at Inverleith fell through, an offer was made to Fettes College to buy the plot of land where Broughton High School and Lothian and Borders Police headquarters currently stand; the Fettes governors, wary of thousands of fervent rugby men descending upon their doorstep, politely declined.
Thoughts then turned to a site a mile or so south, which was eventually purchased from the Edinburgh Polo Club and paid for by selling debentures to fans. There was no great deliberation over the name; it simply inherited the title of the land it occupied. 'Murrayfield' – a moniker that owed its existence to Archibald Murray, who, in 1735, had built a grand house on his estate.
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The final bow at Inverleith came in January 1925, a victory over France that sent Scotland on the road with momentum. Wins in Wales and Ireland followed, setting the stage for a grand opening at their new fortress. The opponent? England. The occasion? A Calcutta Cup battle infused with added grandeur – the chance to seize Scotland's first-ever Grand Slam.
70,000 excited and partisan spectators were inside Murrayfield on that beautiful spring day, 21st March 1925, edgy with anticipation. Scotland were in good form, but England were a hell of a team. Over the previous 12 years (which only consisted of seven championships as five had been lost to the First World War), Dave Davies' side had recorded five Grand Slams and suffered just two defeats. They were unbeaten in their last 13 championship matches and victory at Murrayfield would give them an unprecedented hat-trick of outright titles.
The game swung back and forth, England going ahead early with a penalty before Jimmy Nelson scored a converted try to give Scotland a 5–3 advantage at half-time. England eventually moved into an 11–5 lead but a converted try by Johnny Wallace pulled Scotland to within a point and then, with the only a few minutes left on the clock, Herbert Waddell stepped forward. A drop-goal, worth four points in those days, sailed through the uprights. Murrayfield erupted. Scotland, against the odds, had claimed their first Grand Slam with a 14–11 triumph. A stadium born to host greatness had announced itself with a game for the ages.
Over the next century, Murrayfield has borne witness to it all – glory, despair and moments of undiluted sporting theatre, not only housing Test rugby in this country but coming to define it. There have been days here when the game has transcended mere sport, when the outcome was burned into the very fabric of national consciousness. The world-record crowd of 104,000 in 1975, crammed into this grand old place like pilgrims to a holy site, bore witness to a ferocious Scottish triumph over Wales. The Grand Slam of 1984, sealed with Jim Calder's try against France, reaffirmed Murrayfield's status as a stage for the extraordinary. And then, of course, there was 1990, when David Sole's men, faces grim with resolve, strode out to humble an England side that had dared to believe they could simply turn up and take what they felt was theirs.
Murrayfield has hosted the giants of the world game and been the setting for Scotland's greatest triumphs over South Africa and Australia, a venue where underdog victories have carried the scent of the miraculous. The Calcutta Cup duels here have burned with the same intensity as any Test match played in the sport's fiercest arenas.
It has also been a place of reinvention. The modern Murrayfield is a far cry from the raw, elemental coliseum of the past. Floodlights blaze where once the winter gloom swallowed the players whole, and the hybrid surface now tempers the sodden quagmire that defined the great battles of yesteryear. But if the stadium has changed, its soul remains untamed. The ghosts of past warriors still walk its corridors, their footsteps forever echoing down the tunnel and onto the field.
Writing this book was a pure joy, particularly when we delved into the lesser known or forgotten fixtures. While Rob will have his own selections, my own favourites include the 1946 victory over the New Zealand Army (a team which Scottish back-rower John Orr viewed as being even better than the All Blacks as it contained several professional rugby league players); the 1969 match against the Springboks which was mired with controversy as anti-apartheid protesters challenged the moral validity of the game taking place; the Scottish Claymores triumph in the World Bowl in 1996 (played in front of almost 40,000 fans at Murrayfield while an estimated TV audience of 200 million watched from around the world, with the game broadcast in 127 countries and with more than 50 million viewers watching the Claymores' success live on the Fox Network in the US alone); the Gala-Kelso Scottish Cup final in 1999 that saw a 21-year-old Chris Paterson have a Hollywood summer where he went from playing second division rugby to appearing in a Rugby World Cup just six months later; Scotland Women's sole appearance at Murrayfield when they defeated Sweden in 2002; and the 2018 Calcutta Cup, which reignited the fixture and bore witness to one of the greatest passes ever seen in the history of the game.
Now, as Murrayfield marks its centenary, we didn't merely celebrate bricks and mortar, steel and concrete, nor even the hundreds of matches played on its hallowed turf. We honoured the very essence of the game as it exists in Scotland – tough, proud, unyielding. We honoured the generations of players who bled and triumphed here, the supporters who have sung through victory and despair, and the unshakable belief that, on any given day, beneath the darkening Edinburgh sky, anything is possible.
100 years on, history echoes in the rafters while legends continue to be forged on the field, and dreams and memories that will last a lifetime are made. Happy birthday, old thing.
- To find out more about ‘This Is Murrayfield: 100 Years Of History In 100 Matches’, click HERE.
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