MY LIFE IN RUGBY

THE FORMER SCOTLAND, NEWCASTLE AND WATSONIANS LOCK

Icelebrated the highlight of my Scotland playing career with Gregor Townsend and our respective other halves in sleepy Brive. Gregor was playing there at the time and invited us to stay after we’d just beaten France in a quite brilliant display of running rugby. It was just after the football World Cup and the stadium felt huge and the atmosphere was incredible.

That win, unbeknown to us at the time, had given us a shot at winning the last Five Nations title in 1999. As Neil Jenkins’ kicks kept going over to keep Wales in touch at Wembley, it suddenly dawned us that England might lose.

So, by the time Scott Gibbs charged over and Jenkins slotted the allimportant conversion, we were dancing up and down at Gregor’s house. The trouble was, being a Sunday, Brive was like a ghost town and nowhere was open. Luckily, Gregor’s team-mates Olivier Magne and François Duboisset knew a pizza restaurant owner and we had a fabulous night in there.

Only two years earlier I’d been standing at the bar at the now-defunct Century 2000 nightclub in Edinburgh drowning my sorrows in a midweek session with Duncan Hodge after we’d failed to make the matchday squad for the November Test against Australia that Saturday.

Andy Reid pulled out at the last minute though and I was drafted onto the bench and Duncan came into the side as injury cover. I ended up coming on for Ian Smith. After a good start, we fell away and I remember George Gregan running around Scott Murray who’d moved to the back row but would be my second-row partner in the national side for the most of the following seven years.

I played the stunt double role to Damian Cronin in the Six Nations Championship that followed, coming on after about 50 minutes once he’d blown a gasket. At the end of that season, we had a tour to Fiji and Australia and that’s when things started to happen for me on the international front.

We lost to Fiji away in my first Test start before heading to Australia where we beat a strong New South Wales side. A lot of the players on that trip would make up the fulcrum of the national team for the next four to five years.

I was fortunate to win 71 caps for Scotland and play in two World Cups. The 2003 World Cup was everything a World Cup should be. The infrastructure was in place as it followed hot on the heels of the Sydney Olympics.

It was well supported and we were looked after really well. It was just a shame we didn’t perform on the pitch, only scraping through to the quarterfinals where we lost to the hosts.

As well as captaining my country on a short tour to North America, another highlight was playing my farewell game for Scotland against the Barbarians at Pittodrie in Aberdeen. Aberdeen is where I’d first started playing rugby as a pupil at Gordon’s College before going on to play for Watsonians, Edinburgh University and Caledonia Reds.

Injuries were catching up with me at that stage and I knew it was the perfect time to bow out.

Before my shoulder dropped off, I finished with a season in the Italian Championship with Petrarca Padova. Most of my professional rugby though, bar one season with the Borders, was played at Newcastle.

As an agile lock, our attacking style really suited me and we gave anyone a run for their money on home soil.

We were more of a Cup team and lifted the trophy twice, beating Newcastle and then Sale in two finals that went right to the wire at Twickenham.