Edinburgh Rugby sell-outs can become the norm thanks to change of coach and venue - Allan Massie

Long ago officialdom insisted that the game is for the players, not spectators.

Hence the rebuke delivered by J Aikman Smith, secretary of the SRU, to King George V who had asked why there were no numbers on the jerseys of the Scotland team; “it is a rugby match, Your Majesty, not a cattle show.” Or so the story goes. Hard to believe, but Scotland were indeed the last of the Home Nations to help spectators identify players by numbering jerseys.

Well, of course, we have come a long way from then. Nevertheless for the first quarter-century of professional rugby, you didn’t have to be a cynic to believe that, as far as the Edinburgh Pro team was concerned, the SRU regarded spectators with indifference, even – if you felt bitter – contempt. How else to account for the SRU’s failure to provide the club with a ground of its own, and so condemn spectators to watching matches in the vast cavernous bowl of the international ground?

The transformation since the club was at last provided with its mini-Murrayfield – the DAM Health Stadium – has been remarkable. Indeed so remarkable that when the club has its first-sell out match this evening, there will be some asking why it wasn’t built to accommodate a crowd of 10,000 rather than the just less than 8,000 that will be there this evening.

Of course it is not only the new stadium that has put a spring in the team’s step this season. The change of coach has also been important. Richard Cockerill had many merits. Technically acute and with the high standards one would expect from one reared and schooled in the traditions of Leicester Tigers, for so long the leading English club, he made Edinburgh a harder and more efficient team, but scarcely, or scarcely ever, a joy to watch. You