Glasgow Rugby are one of three professional rugby union teams in Scotland, Edinburgh Rugby and The Borders being the other two. They play at Hughenden (capacity 5,500).

When the Heineken Cup was suggested SRU officials were concerned that Scottish club sides could not compete against the best teams from France and England and that districts might do better.

The four traditional districts - the Borders, Edinburgh, Glasgow and the North & Midlands (rebranded as Caledonia) - were given the go-ahead to take part in Europe. For the first two seasons, players were still released to play for their clubs in domestic competition, but eventually the districts became full-time operations. Glasgow, however, did not compete in the Heineken Cup until the 1997/8 season.

Then financial difficulties - the SRU’s high debt, partly as a result of the redevelopment of Murrayfield - called for retrenchment. After two seasons, financial difficulties forced the Union to merge the four teams into two. Glasgow merged with Caledonian to form a team to be known as Glasgow Caledonian. From the 2002/3 season the Caledonian label was dropped and the team were simply known as Glasgow Rugby.

The enforced merger came just after Glasgow had shown some signs of progress by qualifying for the Heineken quarter-final play-offs, in which they lost heavily to Leicester. The combined strength of the new teams was supposed to build on such modest progress, but it did not happen.

The issue of crowd sizes returned at the 1999 World Cup, by which time a Welsh/Scottish League had been established - essentially the Welsh First Division with the two Scottish sides tacked on.

The Celtic League, begun in the autumn of 2001, has been a more attractive competition for players and public alike. Glasgow reached the semi-finals of the inaugural competition but have struggled since.