The Foundation has been established by supporters to promote the club, to strengthen the bonds between the club and the community and to encourage the club to take proper account of the interests of its supporters and of the community it serves in its decisions. We aim to support the concept of democratic supporter involvement and representation in the club. The Foundation is also a community benefit organisation. It is here to build bridges between the community and Edinburgh Rugby and to use the power of rugby for the good of the community. We are a not-for-profit organisation and we are therefore the perfect partner between club and supporter. The Foundation needs you, the supporter, to make it a success.

Meeting with Gordon McKie and Nic Cartwright

As previously advised, some of the ERF representatives met with the SRU Chief Executive, Gordon McKie and Nic Cartwright, the newly appointed CEO for the new Scottish professional rugby team based in Edinburgh. We promised to report back to you all briefly within 24 hours and what follows is a brief summary of what was discussed. A full report will be issued very shortly in conjunction with ERSC who are meeting with the SRU tonight. We felt that this approach would be more straightforward for supporters to digest and would present both groups as united on behalf of supporters' views, beliefs and opinions before, during and after the recent crisis that befell our team. I appreciate that many of you will have questions that will follow from what is about to be posted and would simply ask that you hold fire for another day or so when we will try to address these as fully as we are able to.

Meeting summary

We received a brief outline of the current state of play with ownership of Edinburgh rugby. This information was broadly that which has already been stated in the press releases from SRU. Introduced to Nic Cartwright (CEO) and brief information about his background. We then gave summary of what the Edinburgh Rugby Foundation is, what our aims and objects are and the history of our set up. We then asked the questions we felt were pertinent to the Foundation, as well as some of the questions supporters had asked us to raise.

East of Scotland

There is now a dedicated person in charge of the running of Edinburgh (Nic Cartwright) and there will be a strong emphasis on integration with the community and clubs. There are no less resources available than there were under Edinburgh Rugby Limited.

Independence of Edinburgh based Team

Whilst the SRU own the pro-team it will be Nic’s job to run Edinburgh as an autonomous team.

Key message from SRU

We asked the SRU if they had a key message, which they wished us to pass onto supporters at this time: The SRU would like us to pass on to supporters that it is now time to move forward towards making Edinburgh a strong and competitive pro-team. They wish to point out that they may not have been able to do this in the past, but feel confident that they can now. It is now important to strengthen the team, integrate with the framework and rebuild and they would urge all Edinburgh supporters to join them in being positive for the future.

  • A frequently asked question (FAQ) list will be available to supporters on the Edinburgh section of the SRU website on Thursday afternoon and will address many of the issues that were raised by the ERF.
  • Nic Cartwright has come from a background of 8 years at London Bronco’s/Harlequins rugby league team. Whilst there he had experience of working with the supporters club and a spin off ‘Supporters action group’. The action group had an almost identical remit to ERF, and were working towards being a supporters trust. He is therefore very positive about building strong links with ERF.

FULL ERF REPORT WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY.