Grand Slam was ours, come hell or high water

I WAS privileged to play with a fantastic squad of players at what was largely a successful time for the Scotland team. Like any good team we weren’t reliant on any one individual, there was always someone ready to step up and take the lead. Everyone knew their role in the team and mine, as a winger, was obviously to cross the whitewash at all costs and put points on the board. I managed to score 15 tries in 37 Tests but that’s not to say I didn’t make an arse of things many, many times!

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Funnily enough, in the Ireland game in 1989 when I scored a hattrick, people say to me that must be a great memory. But, you know what, the thing that sticks in the back of my mind is butchering a three-on-one, on the halfway line, towards the end of the first half. All I had to do was draw the full-back and give the pass, but I went myself and the chance went begging. Afterwards, I thought ‘you clown’. Sean (Lineen) and Scott (Hastings) never said anything to me but I knew fine well that they weren’t happy, and rightly so. Ironically, I only got moved to the wing by the coach of Royal High, my old school’s former pupils’ team, because he thought I was too much of a greedy bugger to play scrum-half !

That win over Ireland was one of five wins in six matches against them, the only defeat coming in my debut in 1985. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, if it wasn’t for John Rutherford I don’t think I’d have got capped at all. It was John who encouraged me to go to Selkirk after Royal High FP had been relegated straight back down from the First Division having won promotion the year before. John was Mr Scotland Rugby at the time, the main man, and it was a no-brainer to join a club where there were players of his calibre and Iain Paxton’s. John could see the things I needed to work on and at the end of each training session he’d spend half an hour with me working on my box kicking and other areas that needed improvement.