'We've come from back pitches': The one positive Scotland can take from Murrayfield defeat

It was a very tough day on the pitch for Scotland on Saturday. There is no getting away from that. But it was a great day off it as a record crowd of 30,498 turned up at Scottish Gas Murrayfield.

And while the players and coaches immediate thoughts after the 84-7 thumping by England will be on lifting themselves for the crucial Round 3 Guinness Women’s Six Nations game with Italy this coming weekend, the bigger picture is all about fan engagement and building on what has just happened.

Before Saturday’s fixture Scotland’s record home crowd for a women’s fixture was 7,774 when they sold out Hive Stadium for the visit of the Red Roses two years ago.

The women’s record crowd for the national football team is 18,555 when they took on Jamaica at Hampden Park seven years ago, but now the rugby team hold the record for the biggest standalone crowd for a women’s sporting occasion north of the border after the 30,000 barrier was broken. It was also just the ninth time that Scotland women have played in the national rugby stadium.

“Saturday was about so much more than just the game,” Rachel Malcolm, Scotland’s captain, said. “I think for those of us that have been around for 10 years plus in this team, we’ve come from back pitches, we’ve come from playing in front of a couple of hundred people in stands to this.

“To arrive at the stadium and have the reception that we got was phenomenal and the noise when we ran out onto the pitch was something else.

“It’s a result of the work that we’ve done as players over recent times to put performances out there on the pitch that make people want to come back.

“This wasn’t one of those performances sadly, but that doesn’t take away from what we’ve created over the last ten years or so to make this happen.

“We’re at the beginning of a new journey after last year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup and we’re going to keep pushing to get back to those levels [that saw them reach the quarter-finals at the showpiece event in England] so that we can put on performances in that the fans can be proud of.”

Scotland’s only other home game in the Championship this year comes on Saturday 9 May and that will be a round four clash with France at Hive Stadium, next door to Scottish Gas Murrayfield.

Asked whether Scotland’s women should play at the 67,144 capacity Murrayfield more often going forward, back-row Malcolm added: “To be honest, that kind of next stage bit is someone else’s job.

“I don’t quite know what the process is in terms of how we build that. We want occasions like this one, but if we were at Murrayfield for every game, would we have that? Probably not.

“I think it’s just about being tactical about how we build that momentum, choosing key games [to play at Murrayfield]. We want to be here, but we also want to be in full stadiums.”

Elis Martin, replacement hooker, said: “This was different to what we’ve ever experienced before and it’s probably the first time a lot of us have almost felt that sense of ‘oh wow, this is more people than I can count’ when we came off the team bus.

“The amount of people there at that point and then more by kick-off, the amount of people shouting, the amount of people singing with smiles on faces and the amount of kilts and flags, it was absolutely incredible.

“Although it might feel at the end of the day that the game is the most important thing, it was important to also take a moment to take that emotion in and have a tear in your eye which everyone did during the anthems.

“And the thing about the Making Moves campaign [to grow women’s rugby in Scotland] is that it’s not a one-and-done. We’re going to be playing France at the Hive in a few weeks’ time, but who says we can’t do this more at Murrayfield in the future?

“Next year we’ve got three home games in the Six Nations, so who is to say it can’t be something we do once, twice, maybe all three times?

“But we need to get the backing of everyone, don’t we? To sell over 30,000 tickets is absolutely ridiculous, it’s amazing. Let’s say next Six Nations, we’ve got those three home games, maybe we go for 40,000, 50,000, maybe we keep growing that.

“I only want to play at Murrayfield if people want that and if that is the product that people want to see. I hope [we will be back at Murrayfield in the future] and I would love that and I’m sure the rest of the team would absolutely love that. But we need the people to keep showing up like they did for this game.”