Scottish Premiership (rugby)

Tennents Premiership

Sport	Rugby union
Founded	1973
No. of teams	10
Country	Scotland
Most recent champion(s)	Melrose (10th title)
Most titles	Hawick (12 titles)
Level on pyramid	1
Relegation to	National League Division One
Domestic cup(s)	Scottish Cup
Official website	http://www.scottishrugby.org/

The Scottish Premiership (referred to as the Temnents Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is an amateur league competition for Scottish rugby union clubs. First held in 1973, it is the top division of the Scottish League Championship. The current champions are Melrose, while the most successful club is Hawick, who have won the competition twelve times.

Ten clubs contest the league, with the bottom club relegated to the Scottish National League Division One and second-bottom club involved in a play-off. The top level of club rugby in Scotland are the two professional teams that play in the Pro14 competition.

Edinburgh

Ayr

Glasgow Hawks

Hawick

Melrose

Stirling County

Location of teams in 2018–19 Scottish Premiership

Boroughmuir

Currie

Edinburgh Academicals

Heriot's

Watsonians

Location of teams in 2018–19 Scottish Premiership within Edinburgh

History

Up to season 1972–73, Scotland's rugby union clubs participated in what was known as an 'unofficial championship'. It provided very unbalanced competition: some clubs played more fixtures than others and some fixture lists provided stiffer opposition than others. The resulting league table at the end of each season gave a very unbalanced and difficult-to-comprehend set of results.

Starting in season 1973–74, the Scottish Rugby Union organised the full member clubs into six leagues. This suited some of the 'open' clubs but many of the older former pupils clubs found it difficult to compete successfully and were forced into going 'open' themselves to try to recruit some of the better players. Those that didn’t declined. Open clubs kept their old FP or Academical name, and still played on grounds owned by the schools. In the first 14 seasons of league rugby the Division I championship was won by Hawick on ten occasions.

One consequence was soon apparent: fewer players were selected from English clubs to represent Scotland. For the first time since before the First World War, the domestic game was producing an adequate number of players of genuine international class. Though the SRU's administrators were often seen as backward looking, Scotland had a national league before England, Wales or Ireland.

Heriot’s FP became the first city club to win the championship, they had already attracted "outsiders"; their leading try-scorer was Bill Gammell, a Fettesian already capped for the Scotland national rugby union team while playing for Edinburgh Wanderers. League rugby drew the crowds, and the 20 years that followed its introduction were the best in the history of Scottish club rugby. In that period the title of champions rarely went out of the Borders: with Hawick, Gala and Melrose enjoying long periods of ascendancy. Recently, however, the Borders domination has faded and Glasgow Hawks won the title three times in successive years between 2003–04 and 2005–06.

Since the advent of the leagues, the Scottish Rugby Union and its member clubs have re-organised the competition several times, usually to change the number of teams.

The top Scottish clubs qualified to the British and Irish Cup from 2009 to 2014.

Competition Format^[1]

Each of the 10 clubs play each other at home and away between August and January, resulting in 18 games played by each club. Four points are awarded for a win, two for a draw and zero for a loss. Bonus points are also on offer in each game - one for scoring four or more tries and the other for the losing club finishing within seven points of the winning club.

2017–18 Clubs

Promoted from 2017–18 Scottish National League Division One

• Edinburgh Academicals (1st)

Details:

Past winners

References