Student in Edinburgh? ENRFC is Looking for New Rugby Players!

New to Edinburgh? Come Find Your Team at Northern

Moving to a new city for university is exciting. New course, new flat, new everything. But if you've played rugby before, there's usually a moment a few weeks in where you realise something's missing. No Saturday game. No teammates. No post-match pint with people who've just been through the same 80 minutes as you.

That's where Edinburgh Northern RFC comes in. A proper club, right in the middle of town. We're a genuinely welcoming, sociable club with a very good clubhouse (The Bunker) and a real competitive edge on a Saturday. Best of all, we're central. Inverleith is a short walk or cycle from Stockbridge, the New Town, and most of the city's student areas, and it's easy to reach on public transport. No hour-long trek to a pitch in the middle of nowhere.

We pride ourselves in welcoming new players. Here's what one of our current players, James Breslin, who joined us as a student at Heriott-Watt and has now played for over 5 years has to say:

I came down to Northern during my 3rd year of uni, having fallen out of love with the sport a bit since leaving home.

I hadn’t really enjoyed the freshers rugby experience as I found that there were already pre-set cliques of guys who weren’t interested in welcoming anyone new. My first session down at the bunker I instantly knew I was in the right place - Northern is easily the most inclusive and friendly sports team I’ve been a part of, including teams I grew up playing with.

It strikes a great balance of social and competitive rugby and is one of the few clubs that is genuinely open to all levels of experience.

We've welcomed players from Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh University, Napier University, QMU and multiple colleges across the city.

Rugby that fits around your degree

Here's the bit that matters most for students: training is optional.

We train Tuesday and Thursday evenings, 6:30pm to 8:00pm at Inverleith Park with qualified coaches. Come to both, come to one, come to neither during exam season. Nobody's going to give you grief for it. Deadlines happen. Placements happen. Life happens. We'd rather you stayed involved for three or four years than burned out in three months.

Games are Saturday afternoons, which leaves your Sunday free for the library (or not, we don't judge).

We run a 1st XV and a 2nd XV in competitive East Region leagues, plus an over-35s side for the veterans.

That means whatever you're after, there's a spot:

- Want to push yourself? The 1st XV plays in East Region 2, a competitive league with lots of close matchups.

- Want to play for the love of it? The 2nd XV is a brilliant place to get regular game time in a more relaxed environment while still playing real, competitive fixtures. Our 2nd XV won the league two years ago, and we're aiming to do it again.

- Never played before? Genuinely fine. We've had players turn up having never held a ball and be playing matches within a few weeks. Multiple players did just that.

You're not locked into one team either. The majority of lads at the club have played for both the 1st and 2nd team.

You won't be the only student

We've got a solid contingent of students and recent graduates already in both squads, and every season brings more. You won't be walking into a room of forty-somethings talking about mortgages. You'll find people at the same stage of life as you, many of whom arrived in Edinburgh exactly the way you did.

As our former head coach Ben Black put it:

> "We regularly welcome rugby players who've recently moved to Edinburgh for work or university and are looking for a new club. If you're keen to stay fit during the week, play competitive rugby on Saturdays, and make friends in a new city, our first team is the ideal place to start."

The social side

We're an unashamedly social club. The calendar includes:

- Annual tours abroad, genuinely the highlight of the season for most of us

- Club dinners and awards nights

- Pub crawls that have become the stuff of legend

- Our own Edinburgh Northern Sevens in April, one of the biggest sevens tournaments in Scotland, drawing teams from across the UK and Europe

- And of course, Saturdays in The Bunker after the final whistle

If you're new to the city and want a ready-made social life beyond your flatmates and your course, this is a shortcut.

Networking

At Northern, you play alongside lawyers, engineers, teachers, financiers, software engineers, tradespeople, entrepeneurs, and everything in between, across a huge age range. That's a hundred-plus years' worth of connections sitting in one clubhouse.

We're not going to pretend that's the reason to join. You should join because you want to play rugby. But we'd be amiss not to mention that a lot of our younger members have found placements, internships, first jobs, flats, and career advice through people they met at training. Nobody's networking in the LinkedIn sense. It's simply that when you spend two years in the same scrum as someone, they tend to want to help you out.

For a student who'll be job-hunting in a year or two, that's worth having.

Coming along

You don't need to sign anything or make a decision. Just turn up. It's free!

When: Tuesday or Thursday, 6:30pm

Where: Inverleith Park, off East Fettes Avenue, EH4 1DN

Bring: Boots, gumshield if you've got one, something warm for after

We know it's not easy coming down to a new club for the first time, so if you'd rather have a chat first, drop us a message through the contact form at [enrfc.co.uk](https://www.enrfc.co.uk/) or find us on Instagram [@edinburghnorthernrfc](https://www.instagram.com/edinburghnorthernrfc) or Facebook.

Whether you're a seasoned player looking for a competitive Saturday, someone getting back into it after a few years off, or a total beginner who fancies giving it a go, there's a place for you here. Bring a mate too!