THERE was a sporting event in Glasgow on Friday which attracted a larger crowd than most Premiership football games the next day.

And I'm not claiming that the availability of alcohol had anything to do with attracting punters, although it didn't do any harm either.

This was the city's professional rugby side, Glasgow Warriors, who play at what most people still call Scotstoun Showground, but which has been renamed Scotstoun Stadium. The Showground name dates from when Glasgow Agricultural Society ran the park, sandwiched between Jordanhill and Scotstounhill, for its Clydesdale horse competitions - imagine Crufts but with animals bigger than their owners.

Inevitably Clydesdale-owning has somewhat declined, so Scotstoun Showground became an athletics track. Appeared there once in the heats of the Glasgow Boys' Brigade 100 metres. Beaten by a cheating rogue who flew off on a false start which was inexplicably missed by the starter. But I'm not bitter.

Then the Showground's fade to obscurity was halted by the council's sporting arm, Glasgow Life, which invested millions on the stadium. Glasgow Warriors, who had a ground-sharing deal with Partick Thistle at Firhill - not always appreciated by Thistle fans who preferred a more pristine look to their grass - were then tempted to Scotstoun.

Crowds on a Friday night range from 5000 to 10,000 which not only trumps many top football sides these days, but is also impressive for a city where the Friday night stereotype is of going to the pub and drinking until your head falls off.

Thanks though to the Criminal Law (Consolidation) Act, the well-known ban on alcohol at sporting events only applies to football grounds, plus Murrayfield. Club rugby fans, it seems, can hold their liquor in the eyes of the law.

Professional rugby is still in its infancy in Scotland, which is why Glasgow Warriors work so hard to attract fans. The players pose for pictures and chat with supporters before the game unlike the top football professionals who exist cocooned from the hoi polloi.

These are well-trained athletes who play a fast, organised game of rugby unlike the mayhem of the old amateur game.

As a Herald reader once put it: "A pal who played rugby came off the park with a pair of bruised and bleeding testicles. Even now, he still doesn't know who they belong to."

Until the professional game came to Glasgow, it was these enthusiastic amateurs who kept rugby alive in the city, with many of the clubs being the former pupils of the city's fee-paying and grant-aided schools. There is still an Allan Glen's FP rugby club even although the school itself closed more than 25 years ago.

Other successful clubs such as Whitecraigs have no feeder school, but Whitecraigs is helped by having a great ground and clubhouse built by a helpful housebuilder who moved the club into far-off fields so that it could build on their existing ground.

The bars of Glasgow rugby clubs were at their busiest in the seventies when they ran discos before late-night clubs and bars took over in the city centre.

Nice middle-class girls in the west end would prefer to go to a Hughenden disco - the rugby ground of Hillhead FPs - with the possibility of meeting a doctor or lawyer rather than risk a night in Joanna's or other city centre club where you might, heaven forfend, accidentally meet someone from Easterhouse or even the south side.

The rugby clubs, apart from providing a sporting outlet for overweight lawyers and accountants, also ran legendary tours.

I once went on one to Italy with Whitecraigs, and of course what happens on tour stays on tour, but I did smile when I saw a former Whitecraigs chap at the Warriors game on Friday chatting with an influential bank executive.

In Rome he fell foul of the rugby tour's court - they hold courts to penalise people who step just a little out of line - and then had to wear a Pavarotti fat suit while singing O Sole Mio on the Spanish Steps.

Hordes of excited Japanese tourists took his picture, possibly thinking that Pavarotti had gone to seed a bit.

One former Scotland international player told the gag of coming home from a lengthy tour, and, half asleep in bed with his wife on his first night back, hearing a noise downstairs, sleepily blurted out: "That's not your husband is it?"

His feelings of guilt were assuaged by his wife sleepily replying: "No, he's away on tour."

The rugby story I like was recounted by actor John Cairney who appeared with Celtic players on the BBC sports quiz Quizball. When the question was asked, "Who or what is a garryowen?" Willie Wallace buzzed in, and instead of explaining it was a high kick from the hands in rugby, blurted out: "The racing correspondent of the Daily Record?"

Back at Scotstoun Stadium on Friday, the Warriors won, thanks to American-born Tommy Seymour's spirited try. And I could toast their success with a pint, albeit in a plastic cup. It will never take over from football as Glasgow's dominant sport, but it does have its attractions.