Doddie Weir
Towering and flamboyant Scotland and Lions rugby star who excelled as a lineout jumper
DODDIE WEIR, who has died aged 52 of motor neurone disease, played 61 times for Scotland as a towering lineout jumper who would charge in the loose, in Bill Mclaren’s phrase, “like a mad giraffe”; he appeared in three Rugby World Cup tournaments and went on a British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa.
He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at Christmas 2016, when he was 48, and made the fact public in June the following year on Global MND Awareness Day, announcing the formation of the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation (the 5 was the number on his Scotland shirt) to raise funds for research into the disease and to provide grants for people suffering from it. The fund has raised over £5 million.
He said he had been inspired by the J9 Foundation set up by another rugby international and MND victim, Joost van der Westhuizen, against whom he had played a number of times, and saw again, before he was struck by the disease himself, when the Springbok went to Scotland to raise awareness of MND.
A vocal and hugely popular figure in Scottish sport, Doddie Weir was usually seen in a flamboyant tartan outfit which he had had specially made from the colours of the teams he played for.
George Wilson Weir, known as Doddie from early childhood, was born in Edinburgh on July 4 1970, the eldest of four children of Jock and Margaret Weir (née Houston), known as Nanny because of her former job. They lived and worked at Cortleferry Farm, in a remote part of the Borders, a dozen miles from Galashiels.
His father and two younger brothers played rugby for Gala and the sons also played for Melrose. His sister was a shotput champion and a keen rider. Doddie was brought up with horses and took part in local gymkhanas and pony club events, often winning trophies.
He was educated at Fountainhall Primary, a school catering mostly for children from local farms, and he found it “a bit of a culture shock” when he was moved at the age of 10 to Stewart’s Melville College in Edinburgh. He played rugby there, well enough to be chosen to go on a tour to New Zealand with a Scottish schools squad, but his main interest remained with horses.
He once said: “Rugby wasn’t high on my agenda, unlike equestrianism... but I fell into, or grew into, rugby. Everything I achieved through rugby was an unexpected bonus. I’d have been just as happy competing at the Horse of Year Show, or the Hickstead Derby, or Gatcombe Park, or Burghley, as I would at Lansdowne Road or Parc des Princes, quite possibly happier.”
“Rugby came easily to me,” he said, “aided by luck, fate, coincidence, call it what you will.” The first piece of luck was going to play for Melrose under-14s rather than at Gala, where he was expected to go. The reason he did not was that mini-rugby at Gala was on Saturday mornings, when he was engaged in riding events, and at Melrose it was on Sundays.
It was also lucky for him that Melrose were the outstanding club at that time, winning the Scottish championship five years out of seven when he was playing there, alongside internationals such as Craig Chalmers, Bryan Redpath, Graham Shiel and Carl Hogg. They also had Jim Telfer, rated by Weir as “arguably Scotland’s greatest ever coach.” When Telfer went on to coach the Scotland team, Weir and the best of his team-mates went with him.
Weir said he would never have made it to the top without the coach’s belief in him. The admiration was mutual. Telfer described him as a superb athlete: “As a lineout jumper he was immense, with terrific hands to catch, tip and deflect, and a real obstacle on the opposition’s ball. “Off the field,” he said, “Doddie could be the village idiot, loud – very loud – gregarious, doing daft things.”
But on the field “he was a completely different animal: focused, concentrated, confident, a huge presence.” Because he weighed only 13 stones when he started representative rugby, he was placed in the back row as a number eight, but was soon plunged into the heart of the scrum as a lightweight lock, easy to be lifted at the lineout, though he bulked up later by four or five stones.
He made his debut for Scotland against Argentina in 1990, when he was 20, and won his last cap, against France, in 2000. He was a member of the squad than won the Five Nations championship in 1999. He scored four tries for Scotland, two of them against the All Blacks at the 1995 Rugby World Cup
In 1993 he helped to win the Melrose Sevens – “giving me one of my greatest thrills” – in a select team containing other Scottish internationals, such as Gregor Townsend and Andy Nicol.
In 1995, the year rugby union went professional, he was persuaded by Rob Andrew, the former England fly-half, to leave Melrose and join a group of other international players being recruited by Newcastle Falcons.
He was at his playing peak and stayed for six years, helping the club to win the English Premiership title in 1998, and was captain when they won the Anglo-welsh Cup in 2001. While at Newcastle he turned down an offer from Saracens that would have made him one of the highest-paid players in British rugby.
His tour to South Africa with the British Lions in 1997, which should have been the high point of his career, ended cruelly, before the Test matches, when a player from Mpumalanga Province called Marius Bosman deliberately smashed his knee – “a cold-blooded, unprovoked stamp,” as one reporter described it – for which the offender escaped suspension.
In the same year, on a happier note, Doddie was the first recipient of the Famous Grouse Scotland Player of the Year award and also married Kathy Hutchinson, whom he had met at a point-to-point some years before.
After leaving Newcastle he played for a revived Borders team, but retired from rugby in 2004. He became commercial director of a waste management company and was in great demand on the after-dinner speaking circuit.
When he was diagnosed with MND, he devoted the rest of life to raising funds for his Foundation, making good use of his many rugby friendships and connections. In a moving event before Scotland’s game against the All Blacks at Murrayfield in November 2017, he was invited to walk on to the pitch with his three teenage sons while the crowd recorded their appreciation of his long service to Scottish rugby.
In 2018 he published an autobiography, My Name’5 Doddie. In 2019 he was appointed OBE for his work for MND and in the same year he was presented, to loud and prolonged applause, with the Helen Rollason award for “outstanding achievement in the face of adversity” at the BBC’S Sports Personality of the Year awards. On his 50th birthday in 2020 he was inducted into Scotland’s Rugby Hall of Fame.
He is survived by his wife and three sons.
Doddie Weir, born July 4 1970, died November 26 2022