We loved seeing weel-kent faces at Melrose Sevens
◆ Amateur days meant that international stars would often play – imagine getting to see Finn Russell in action there today!
Even in the much changed and ever changing rugby world, the Melrose Sevens keep their appeal, sufficiently so for Scotrail to provide extra trains on the Borders Railway from Edinburgh to Tweedbank.
On a fine day there will be a full house at The Greenyards and even if the weather is as foul as it has been this so-called Spring, there will still be more spectators today than can be accommodated at either Glasgow’s Scotstoun or Edinburgh’s Hive.
Even so, the Sevens are not what they were in the amateur days when you might expect to see the best teams featuring three or even four current Scotland players. Moreover, in those days when Saturday afternoon crowds at club matches in the Borders were much bigger than they are now, many of us knew, or at least recognised players in most teams. Even guest ones might include international players from other countries.
There are years that stay in the memory, but I still think the most impressive Sevens performance I recall came at Gala, not Melrose. That was the final of Gala’s own Sevens and they were playing Loughborough College. That college was then a great nursery for English players partly because the most intelligent of rugby coaches, Jim Greenwood, a Lion in 1955 and Scotland’s captain for some four years, was in charge there. So the Loughborough students were not only super-fit but very well schooled in the game.
Well, that afternoon or early evening, the scores were close at half-time, but then Gala ran riot, scoring try after try to win eventually by some 35 points. I can’t recall the Seven, but they had the very fast Drew Gill on the wing and the fast and stylish Duncan Paterson at scrum-half, while they were captained by outrageously talented and inventive forward Peter (PC) Brown.
That final led to a change in the law for Sevens. Hitherto, in Sevens as in the 15-a-side game, the team that had conceded a try kicked the restart. But that day, every time Loughborough kicked off Gala caught the ball and kept hold of it till they scored another try. Whereupon Loughborough kicked off, Gala kept possession until… It was great fun if you were rooting for Gala. Soon after the Sevens law was changed, so that the side that had scored (try, dropgoal or penalty) kicked the restart. Given the way that Scotland have been known to lose possession or concede a penalty straight from a restart, I have sometimes wished that the Sevens law applied in the 15-a-side game too.
You need to be crafty in Sevens. That was a feature of the great Kelso Sevens of the 1980s. Their mastermind was fly-half Andrew Ker, adept at slowing the game down, changing direction, spotting where the opposing defence had drifted out of position, leaving a dog-leg to be exploited. He wasn’t the fastest of foot, though quick over five yards, but few have been faster in thought; I loved watching him control phases before unleashing Roger Baird, Kelso’s flying wing. At that time John Rutherford was the best fly-half in the northern hemisphere, but it was Andrew Ker who was the master of the sevens field.
One of the sad things about the drift to the professional game was the disappearance of talented young stars from the Sevens circuit. In, I think, successive years, the Player of the Tournament at Melrose was won by Chris Paterson, Mike Blair and Marcus di Rollo, none of whom would play there again, being young stars who moved to the professional game.
Still that’s how the whirligig of time goes. Those of us old enough to remember the amateur game sigh every Spring for what has been lost. Those too young for that experience doubtless groan and dismiss us as tiresome fogeys while sure that the professional game is better than anything before. Well, in many ways it is. No one of sense can deny that; its skills and power are alike remarkable. Yet sometimes we old folk sigh for what is lost, and then we may start wondering or dreaming. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to watch Finn Russell or Darcy Graham playing Sevens at Melrose and the other staging posts on the Borders circuit?
You need to be crafty in Sevens. That was a feature of the great Kelso team of the 1980s