MY LIFE IN RUGBY

It is all very well playing international rugby, and representing the Lions in 1993 was a great personal honour, but when you are playing week in week out with your lifelong mates, there’s an emotional attachment that is stronger than playing representative rugby.

So for me, the game that saw Heriot’s fight off relegation and retain its First Division status in 1993, after an improbable victory against champions Melrose, probably ranks higher in terms of my most memorable matches than any game I played for Scotland or the Lions.

Heriot’s are still, touch wood, the only side never to be outside Division One which is a fantastic and a unique record that they have achieved given the uphill struggles since the game went professional.

As far as achievements with Scotland go, winning the Grand Slam in 1990 was fantastic but from a personal perspective I felt my contribution wasn’t perhaps what it might have been.

I was relatively new to the side, and was solid enough, but I felt I played better in my latter years, particularly the 1993 Five Nations, which earned me my Lions call. A lot of the senior players from ’90 had retired and I had to step up, and the extra responsibility instilled more self-confidence.

I certainly wasn’t very confident I’d win a second cap let alone 39 for Scotland, after a poor debut against Wales in 1989. I’d been missing my jumpers all week in training, much to the frustration of Jim Telfer, and that continued into the match. After the game I consoled myself with the fact that we’d won, and I may get another chance on that basis. Just as I was starting to feel better about myself, the big Welsh lock, Kevin Moseley, came up to me said that I could get a game for Pooler any day because I’d hit him more times than his own hooker!

I wasn’t particularly good at rugby at school, I only made it into the first XV in my sixth year, so my ambition was to get one game for Heriot’s First XV. To get selected for the Lions was unbelievable and it was nice to emulate what my older brother Iain had done. It was Iain, by now two years retired, who told me of my call-up while he was away watching the Hong Kong 7s. I got a message saying the squad had been picked but they’d only listed surnames. ‘Is it me or you going?’ he enquired.

I played against North Harbour, Canterbury and Otago leading into the first Test against the All Blacks. As we went onto the pitch for a pre-match walkabout a seagull crapped on my mate Scott Hasting’s head. He wasn’t best pleased anyway because he’d been named on the bench, and this obviously darkened his mood even more. So I thought I’d cheer up by saying it’s supposed to be good luck.

Not long into the game Will Carling got injured and Scott got his chance. Five minutes later he’d broken his jaw and was out of the tour. So much for good luck!

I played in the first Test, a narrow 20-18 defeat, and was replaced by Brian Moore for the next two matches of the series. There was a large English influence in the pack and the selectors obviously thought it made sense to have another member of the same pack playing in the front row. Still, it was an honour to get capped and then sit on the bench in the next two games.

Another source of great family pride came when myself and my two brothers, Iain and David, were named in the Barbarians team together for the 1989 Mobbs Memorial Match against the East Midlands. It was the first and only time we’d formed a frontrow partnership outside of Heriot’s. And they flew my dad down to the Midlands to watch.