Mamba magic

Much has been talked about the financial strength and determination of the English Rugby Union when they hired the services of the Georgia rugby team forwards for pre Calcutta Cup scrum practice.

During the 1999 Rugby World Cup, South Africa played two of their pool matches at Murrayfield, against Scotland and Spain. I was general manager of Heriot’s Rugby Club at the time and the Springboks used Goldenacre for pre-match training. The Boks sent a manager over to the UK a few months before the tournament to assess the training grounds the South African team had been allocated.

The Goldenacre groundsman and I showed the Boks’ man around and he was very impressed with everything he saw apart from The Heriot’s scrumming machine.

He told me it would be no use and I arranged to have a bigger machine sent down from Murrayfield . When Nick Mallet, the then Boks’ coach, saw that one he said it was also no use and contacted his own Union and they flew over, at huge expense, the Boks’ own machine.

It was absolutely enormous and looked like the South Africans had converted, for their scrumming purposes , one of those Limmer and Trinidad Lake Ashphalt road tar-laying machines we used to see working around the streets of Edinburgh.

This monstrous apparatus had to be lifted by a huge crane off the lorry it arrived on and then over the wall and trees lining Warriston Gardens and into its position. The Boks’ called their beloved scrummage machine the Green Mamba. After their qualifying matches they sent The Green Mamba down to London for a match to be played at Twickenham. The 1995 World Cup winners failed to retain the trophy, coming third in 1999, and left their Green Mamba somewhere in England . DOUGLAS S BRUCE Portree, Isle-of - Skye