‘Scotland is home but I have to back my brother Greg’
Murrayfield match is a ‘no-lose’, France flanker’s sibling Scott Alldritt tells Richard Bath
Scott Alldritt has always thought of himself as half-scottish and half-french. Despite being born and raised in his mother’s home town of Auch, a famously pretty spot in south-west France, ever since he can remember he and his family have spent virtually every Christmas and Easter in Scotland with his grandparents or uncle and aunt in the frosty Cairngorms village of Boat of Garten.
The Stewart’s Melville No8 may be better known these days as the older brother of France and La Rochelle breakout star Gregory Alldritt, but a decade ago when the two youngsters and older brother Tom spent a summer working for their uncle at Glenmore Lodge outdoor centre in the Cairngorms, where they washed dishes, served breakfast and yomped around the mountains, they were an anonymous trio of French brothers. It was, he says, two months which forever cemented their love of their adopted country.
“It was an absolutely unbelievable experience,” he says of that summer in Scotland as a wide-eyed 17-year-old. “The
Cairngorms are amazing and all those lochside hikes were unforgettable.”
The Alldritt boys shared a heritage passed down from their father Terry, a Kenyan who was taken out of his South African boarding school aged 12 and transplanted to Stirling.
Although his family stayed in Scotland – Scott also has cousins in Gullane and Edinburgh – Terry Alldritt left for a job in Amsterdam aged 19. But his formative years were spent in Caledonia, and for him it is still home.
Usually, when France play Scotland in the Six Nations, the Alldritts’ conflicting national loyalties are strained. On Sunday, however, Scott will be in the stand and his scarf will definitely be light, rather than dark, blue.
“I see myself as half-scottish and half-french,” the 27-year-old said. “When I’m in France they see me as Scottish, when I’m here they think I’m French. For me being Scottish is all about my dad’s heritage, so I don’t think I have to choose between the two. I’ve always felt as Scottish as French because that identity is what my parents gave me.
“But it’s been a bit different since Greg started playing for France, because I back him and I back the French team because he’s in it. If he wasn’t, it’d be 50-50. Scotland against France is a no-lose for me.”
Scotland, though, have definitely been the poorer for Alldritt junior’s presence in France’s ranks. Last season at the Stade de France, Alldritt was used off the bench for the third time in succession, playing just 10 minutes but scoring two tries against Scotland.
“I don’t think it really hit me how far Greg had come until I was at the Stade de France that day, with 80,000 people watching him play against Scotland, and he scored those two tries,” said Scott. “The whole family were so proud, he’s made so many sacrifices.”
As is so often the case, it is only a player’s nearest and dearest who appreciate quite how much goes into becoming a Test player. When the younger Alldritt took a conscious decision that it was now or never, he effectively took a year out of his studies and threw himself into impressing with his home-town club, Auch, in the third tier of French club rugby. It paid off and he was soon picked up by La Rochelle, going pro in the summer of 2018 and being called into the France squad that
December. For Scott, though, things have not been quite so fraught. After graduating as a mechanical engineer, he worked in Cheltenham in aeronautical engineering before moving to Edinburgh in November 2018 to join global hi-tech defence company Leonardo.
Living in “this beautiful city of Edinburgh” is dreamlike, he says. After a brief dalliance with grass-roots rugby at Royal High Corstorphine, he is now a round peg in a round hole at ambitious but welcoming Stew-mel.
“The rugby here has been amazing,” he said. “Fraser Morrison, the captain at Stew-mel, introduced me to a really approachable gentleman who was down-to-earth and very passionate about the club. I went home and rang my dad – I told him I’d just met the club’s chairman, a man called Finlay Calder. My dad couldn’t believe that I’d been speaking to a legend but didn’t know who he was.”
‘I’ve always felt as Scottish as French – if Greg wasn’t playing it’d be 50-50’