Ambition v realism: the balance at heart of Scotland's Murrayfield move

The growth of women's rugby in Scotland has been gathering pace in recent years.

Professional contracts. Glasgow and Edinburgh playing in the Celtic Challenge. The national team winning the WXV2 title. Heading to this summer's World Cup with genuine hope of reaching the knockout stages.

Now Scottish Rugby is seeking to capitalise on the increased exposure and interest by moving next year's Women's Six Nations match with England away from their normal home of Hive Stadium and into the big bowl at Murrayfield.

It's an exciting step and an ambitious one.

Scotland sold out the 7,800-capacity Hive Stadium for the visit of England last year but moving to the 67,000-seater Murrayfield represents quite a leap of faith.

All of this is a far cry to what many players in the Scotland squad experienced when they first represented their country.

"My first couple of matches were at Broadwood in Cumbernauld," Scotland wing Rhona Lloyd told BBC Scotland. "We played before the under-20s men and there was hardly anybody there.

"It's been a massive journey over the past 30 years to get to this point and I'm so excited for this moment and then for what that will mean for the future."

For Lloyd, the announcement is a reflection of all the work that has gone before and a source of real excitement.

Scottish Rugby's head of women and girl's rugby, Gemma Fay, echoes that but does acknowledge that it is a bold move.

She says the initial target is to breach the capacity of the Hive.

Then they will look to eclipse the crowd for the most-attended women's match ever held in Scotland, which was when the national football team played Jamaica before the 2019 World Cup.

That game at Hampden drew 18,555 fans and served to inspire not only those who were there, but also those running women's sport in this country.

"I was at that game and it was absolutely amazing," former goalkeeper Fay says. "It was a moment in time and it's almost like the gauntlet had been laid down to say, 'look what we can do in women's sport in Scotland'.

"We have an opportunity to better that, but we want to take everybody in women's sport in Scotland with us because this is not versus them.

"This is together. And if we can then go on and lay that next gauntlet down, who knows what can happen within women's sport in Scotland."

That day at Hampden six years ago was the springboard to the Scotland team moving all their matches to the national stadium.

However, that record crowd figure proved to be the high watermark rather than a platform for sustained interest.

Attendances started to dwindle and the vast empty stands did not help create the big-game atmosphere fans crave and, crucially, did not inspire the team.

Therein lies the lesson for Scottish Rugby - ambition is to be embraced, but it must be grounded in a sense of realism about what is achievable, and when.

There is no suggestion at this stage of the women's national team decamping full-time to Murrayfield.

The special atmosphere they have developed recently at the Hive should not be given up lightly, and moving next door to the big stadium for a one-off occasion seems like a sensible approach to test the waters.

Edinburgh and Glasgow have done so to good effect at Murrayfield and Hampden for their festive 1872 Cup derbies, and the hope is Scottish rugby fans will buy into this match in similar numbers.

"We don't want this to be a one-off," said Scotland head coach Bryan Easson. "We want to do it maybe once a season to show how far it's come.

"But we don't want to forget what we've got out there [at Hive Stadium]. The crowd that we've got, it is a different audience.

"The Hive is a brilliant home for us and it will continue to be our home. We'll still be there, but we'll also enjoy the occasion out here [at Murrayfield] too."