The Scottish Premiership is the highest level club division in

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

's national

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

league divisions, and therefore part of the Scottish League Championship. It contains many of the country's highest profile clubs. However it is not the highest level of rugby union in Scotland, as

Edinburgh Rugby Edinburgh Rugby (formerly Edinburgh Reivers, Edinburgh Gunners) is one of the two professional rugby union teams from Scotland. The club competes in the United Rugby Championship, along with the Glasgow Warriors, its oldest rival. Edinburgh play ...

and

Glasgow Warriors The Glasgow Warriors are a professional rugby union side from Scotland. The team plays in the United Rugby Championship league and in the European Professional Club Rugby tournaments. In the 2014–15 season they won the Pro12 title and beca ...

play against Irish, Welsh and Italian teams in the

Pro14 The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. For sponsorship reasons the league is known as the Vodacom United Rugby Championship in ...

. Some matches are shown live on

BBC Alba BBC Alba is a Scottish Gaelic-language free-to-air public broadcast television channel jointly owned by the BBC and MG Alba. The channel was launched on 19 September 2008 and is on-air for up to seven hours a day. The name ' is the Scottish Gae ...

. Until the 2009–10 season, the bottom two teams were relegated to the Second Division. Over the subsequent two seasons, and as part of a two-phased reconstruction announced by the Scottish Rugby Council, the league moved from a 12-team league linear structure into a 10-team league pyramid structure. From the start of the 2012–13 season promotion/relegation between the Premiership and the newly formed National League (formerly the Second Division) is determined as follows: the winner of the National League is automatically promoted replacing the bottom placed team from the Premiership with a play-off between the 9th placed Premiership team and the 2nd placed National League team to determine the second promotion place. The underlying principles behind league reconstruction as set out by the Season Structure Working Party of the Scottish Rugby Council were (a) to shorten the season, (b) to reduce travel costs, (c) to reduce time involved for all, (d) to assist in growing the game and (e) to retain players in the game. The current teams playing in the Premier League are:

Premier League, 2015–16

* Ayr RFC * Boroughmuir RFC * Currie RFC * Dundee HSFP * Gala RFC * Hawick RFC * Heriots RFC *

Melrose RFC Melrose Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club located in the town of Melrose, Scotland, Melrose in the Scottish Borders. The professional men's side competes in the as the "Southern Knights". The club plays at the Greenyards. History The cl ...

* Selkirk RFC * Stirling County RFC

Past winners

Hawick Hawick ( ; ; ) is a town in the Scottish Borders council areas of Scotland, council area and counties of Scotland, historic county of Roxburghshire in the east Southern Uplands of Scotland. It is south-west of Jedburgh and south-south-east o ...

# Heriot's FP #

Gala Gala may refer to: Music * ''Gala'' (album), a 1990 album by the English alternative rock band Lush * Gala (singer), Italian singer and songwriter *'' Gala – The Collection'', a 2016 album by Sarah Brightman * GALA Choruses, an association of ...

# Kelso # Kelso # Melrose # Boroughmuir # Melrose # Melrose # Melrose # Stirling County # Melrose # Melrose # Watsonians # Heriot's FP # Heriot's FP #

# Boroughmuir # Glasgow Hawks # Glasgow Hawks # Glasgow Hawks # Currie RFC # Boroughmuir # Ayr RFC # Currie RFC #

# Ayr RFC #

# Heriot's FP

References

{{Rugby union in Europe National rugby union premier leagues 2 1973 establishments in Scotland Recurring sporting events established in 1973 fr:Championnat d'Écosse de D1 de rugby à XV

Premier League, 2015–16

Past winners

See also

References