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Scotland national rugby union team

Men’s rugby union team representing Scotland

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ945016 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Scotland national rugby union team represents Scotland in men's international rugby union. Governed by the Scottish Rugby Union, the team takes part in the annual Six Nations Championship. They also participate in the Rugby World Cup, which takes place every four years.

Scotland played the first official test match, winning 1–0 against England at Raeburn Place. Scotland competed in the Five Nations from the inaugural tournament in 1883, winning it 14 times outright—including the last Five Nations in 1999—and sharing it another eight. In 2000, the competition became the Six Nations with the addition of Italy. Since this change, Scotland have never won the competition. Scotland have competed in all ten Rugby World Cups, the most recent being in 2023, when they failed to reach the quarter-finals. Their best finish came in 1991, when they lost to New Zealand in the third place play-off.

Scotland have beaten all major rugby union playing nations except New Zealand, with whom they have had two draws.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Scotland national rugby union team” as men’s rugby union team representing Scotland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Scotland, national and rugby.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1883, 1999, 2000, 2023—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1871-03-27. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Scotland, national and rugby providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Scotland national rugby union team”, the useful work is to connect “men’s rugby union team representing Scotland” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q945016. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1883, 1999, 2000 and 2023.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Scotland national rugby union team primary sources, Scotland national rugby union team archive and Scotland research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Scotland national rugby union team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.