The Scotland rugby team for the first rugby international, played at Raeburn Place, Edinburgh, on 27 March 1871. Note that the game was 20 players a side, and that Scotland’s strip was brown
Areport in The Scotsman on the 133rd annual meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) which took place in Aberdeen on 2 March 2019 may well have passed many readers by. Nevertheless, it was a meeting with far-reaching consequences for the sport, because it approved changes to the rules of association football (also known as ‘soccer’ nowadays) which will be adopted by national associations across the globe. It may appear curious that IFAB, which is the worldwide custodian of the rules of soccer, comprises delegates from only five organisations: each of the four UK ‘home’ football associations and the global governing body for soccer, FIFA.