Ian MacGregor
Rugby international, administrator and teacher Born: August 9, 1931; Died: November 28, 2016. IAN MacGregor, who has died aged 85, was a fine Scotland international rugby forward who went on to become one of the leading administrators of the pre-professional years of the game.
A proud Glaswegian, he was educated at Hillhead High School, going on from there to give sterling service to the former pupils’ club as a wing forward. He studied PE at the Scottish School of PE at Jordanhill College, developing a superb physique along the way, before doing his two years of national service with the Royal Air Force.
He had already played for Glasgow District, and in two of the three Scottish trials held in 1955, when he won his first cap, against Ireland, at Murrayfield, on 26 February, 1955. When chosen, he was the first Hillhead HSFP forward to be capped. His was a late call-up, replacing Bill Glen of Edinburgh Wanderers, who pulled out with a poisoned leg.
The other 14 Scotsmen had pulled off that memorable 14-8 win over Wales, in “Arthur Smith’s Match” at Murrayfield two weeks previously, the win ending Scotland’s woeful run of 17 straight international losses; MacGregor’s selection for the unfortunate Glen being the only change.
The call-up came with MacGregor little more than a month into his national service. He won that debut cap, and his second, in the Calcutta Cup match, at Twickenham in March as a Hillhead player. By the time of his third cap, against France, in January, 1956, he had become, while serving in Wales, one of the few non-Welshmen to feature regularly for Llanelli.
He was a Scotland regular throughout the 1956 Five Nations campaign. He played in the French game, the opener to the 1957 Five Nations as a Llanelli player, then he returned to Hughenden to win his eighth and ninth caps against Wales and Ireland in February, 1957. The narrow 5-3 loss to Ireland was his final cap.
Back in Scotland, he took up a teaching post at Glasgow Academy in 1957, and would remain at the academy throughout his career, right up to his retirement in 1991.
On hanging up his rugby boots, he switched to the administrative side of the game, first as a Glasgow district official, then onwards and upwards to the SRU, where he became a special representative and one of the leading administrators at Murrayfield.
He never drove and, over his many years commuting from Glasgow to Murrayfield on SRU business, it is said he got to be on first-name terms with the on-train staff at ScotRail, so often did he make the shuttle trip.
It was said at the time that MacGregor and his fellow Hillhead HSFP man Dr Ian Todd effectively ran Glasgow district rugby.
In 1986, he used his contacts from his time at Llanelli to arrange for an inexperienced Glasgow squad to travel to South Wales and face Llanelli and Cardiff over a long weekend, a foretaste of things to come in the Pro12, long before it was even thought of.
He was a stickler for doing things properly. Jock Craig, the formidable former Ayr prop and director of rugby at the Millbrae club, regularly fell out with MacGregor when he was asked to deputise for Ian McLauchlan or Sandy Carmichael in the Glasgow District team.
“I always played with my stockings round my ankles, I felt constricted when I pulled them up, but Ian always insisted I had to have them up when playing with Glasgow. So I would pull them up to run onto the field, then roll them down, and suffer his censure after the game,” Craig remembers.
MacGregor chaired the selection committee when Scotland won the Grand Slam in 1984, their first such success since the 1920s, but he also gave sterling service on the laws sub-committee, representing the SRU on the International Rugby Board’s laws committee. He also managed Scotland’s touring side to Australia in 1982.
He was also recognised as a superb match analyst, able to quickly assess problems and the means of overcoming them and, as one Anniesland veteran remarked following his death: “A great rugby man, but the most thrawn so-and-so I ever encountered.”
Away from rugby, he was a keen golfer – indeed, in one incident that his family recall fondly, he struck what he called “the finest drive I ever hit”, bent down to pick up his bag, lost his balance, fell over the tee box and broke an ankle.
He was also a keen student of the works of Robert Burns, and could recite Tam o’ Shanter verbatim, without using notes.
In retirement, he continued to live in Glasgow, before moving to Arran, to spend his final years living in Lamlash, from where he was taken to Crosshouse Hospital during his final short illness. He died in the Ayrshire hospital.
MacGregor is survived by Helen, his wife of more than 50 years, sons Calum and Graeme, who followed their father into rugby as fine players with Glasgow Academicals, daughter Sheila and grandchildren Fiona, Alastair, Jennifer and Katie.