Hawick RFC
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| Full name | Hawick Rugby Football Club |
|---|---|
| Union | Scottish Rugby Union |
| Founded | 1873 |
| Location | Hawick, Scotland |
| Ground(s) | Mansfield Park (Capacity: 5,000) |
| President |
 John Thorburn |
| Coach(es) | Nikki Walker |
| Captain(s) | Bruce McNeil |
| League(s) | Scottish Premiership |
| 2016-17 | 9th |
| Official website | |
| www |
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Hawick Rugby Football Club is an amateur rugby union side, currently playing in the Premiership Division One and Border League. The team are based at Mansfield Park at Hawick in the Scottish Borders.
Hawick RFC are one of the most famous rugby clubs in the world. They have always contributed a huge amount to the national side with 58 Hawick players having represented Scotland.
One of Hawick's lesser known claims to fame is that they held the first floodlit match in Scotland in 1879. Bizarrely, it is said that some of the players in the match attempted to tackle shadows.
In October 1872, members of the Hawick and Wilton Cricket Club decided that in order to keep fit over the winter they should begin playing football. Both association and rugby union football were experimented with but the rugby format triumphed as it was considered "manlier and more congenial to the Border nature than the tamer association game". The club was formed on 8 December 1873 and played at Buccleuch Park, the home of the cricket club.
However few games were played as there were not many other rugby clubs in the area, players had difficulty being released from their work, and Edinburgh sides were seldom willing to travel down to play individual club teams.
1885 saw the rugby players reorganised themselves as Hawick Football Club, moving to new premises at the Volunteer Park, just beyond the cricket pitch. New colours were adopted, dark green jerseys and stockings with white shorts, and in 1886 Hawick was admitted to membership of the Scottish Football (later Rugby) Union, only the 19th club to be admitted, the only earlier Border clubs being Gala and Melrose RFC.
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