A SLAM, A SLUMP AND SOME
BORDER HEROES
SCOTTISH RUGBY followers have always had to be pragmatic souls in the pursuit of success. Unlike the English or Welsh, who expect to collect major prizes and challenge for Grand Slams on a regular basis, the normal Murrayfield supporter has no illusions that, for every golden year, there will be other seasons where hope soon crumbles to dust. This was especially true in the 1950s and 1970s, decades which yielded such prolonged misery that they spawned the sort of gallows humour exhibited by the Saltire-waving fan who reacted to the Scots’ 44–0 demolition by the rampaging South Africans in Edinburgh in 1951 with the observation that his compatriots had been lucky to get nil.
With that in mind, there were plenty of reasons to revel in the Scots’ achievements during the 1920s, which turned into a halcyon period for the Caledonian game, with an overall international record of 25 wins and a couple of draws from 41 matches; a victory rate of over 60 per cent, which has rarely been equalled in the intervening decades. There was also the country’s first Grand Slam in 1925, which prompted delirious scenes, but was not repeated thereafter until the twin triumphs of 1984 and 1990. Rugby, obviously, had changed dramatically during that time, and so had the influence of the Borderers on the national team. Because, despite the impact of the Border League and the emergence of a string of gifted performers from the South, only one of their number, Hawick’s Doug Davies, featured among those original Slam-winning heroes.
There were a variety of reasons for this small representation. Selkirk’s gifted scrum-half, Willie Bryce, who shone for his country from 1922 to 1924, was forced to retire prematurely with injury, opening the door for his Glasgow Academicals compatriot, James Nelson, who subsequently made the No 9 berth his own. So, too, the Scots were reliant on a significant number of Exiles in their line-up, which included four Oxford University players, as well as others from Carlisle, Birkenhead Park and London Scottish, who are the only club in the history of the Scottish game to have produced a greater number of internationalists than Hawick. If one peruses the Border newspapers from the mid-1920s, there are occasional grumblings about this or that individual being unfairly overlooked by the selectors, but it is very difficult to argue with the latter’s choices, given the magnificent manner in which they marched unbeaten through the campaign.
In so many ways, it turned into a scintillating winter for the Scottish game. Murrayfield was opened in 1925, and almost immediately played host to a memorable contest when England came calling in pursuit of the Calcutta Cup, even if their draw with Ireland had denied them any aspirations of gaining the Grand Slam. Scotland, meanwhile, had oozed power, panache and penetration in sweeping past the Welsh 24–14 in Swansea, prevailing over the Irish by 14–8 at Lansdowne Road and trouncing the French 25–4 at Inverleith. In which light, this was one of the infrequent occasions when the English were consigned to the role of would-be party poopers on their travels north.
Predictably, the tussle generated a massive amount of public interest, with rugby lovers and other sporting aficionados flocking to Edinburgh from every part of Scotland, whether from Aberdeen and Dundee, or Fife and the West of Scotland, with the starting XV featuring a quartet of Glasgow stars in the guise of the lustrous half-backs, Nelson and Herbert Waddell, the legendary Jimmy Ireland and the towering John Bannerman. Borderers, meanwhile, travelled up to the capital in significant numbers on the train, and it was probably just as well that Murrayfield had taken over from Inverleith. The latter held only 25,000, yet more than 60,000 fans swarmed towards the ground, sparking such clamour and confusion at the turnstiles that the kick-off had to be delayed while thousands of supporters made their way into the unfamiliar amphitheatre.
Eventually, they were rewarded with a classic confrontation, encompassing all the disparate qualities which tend to embody the best sides, regardless of the pursuit. The Scots boasted silk among their glistening three-quarters, in such nonpareils as Dan Drysdale, Ian Smith and the two Georges, Macpherson and Aitken. But there was also a bone-crunching steel about their front row, which featured Davies and Robert Howie, the Kirkcaldy prop, with Ireland in the middle of them, and a string of redoubtable customers comprising the rest of a formidable pack. Yet, unsurprisingly, the English were motivated, combative and fuelled by their desire to dash their rivals’ ambitions, and the lead and balance of power changed time after time. The hosts were trailing 11–10 as the match entered the final quarter, but, despite the fluctuating fortunes, Waddell was an oasis of calm amid the hubbub, and eventually, coolness personified, landed a drop goal – which was worth four points at the time – and his team emerged as 14–11 victors.
It was a notable achievement, a thoroughly deserved honour, and few of the SRU’s personnel would have been entitled to raise a toast that evening more than Davies, the lone Borderer in the ranks, who had endured an altogether unhappier experience in the previous year, when he had ventured to South Africa with the British Lions for what gradually, inexorably, developed into a miserable trek around the Cape. Those were the days when such tours dragged on incessantly, with the Lions participating in 21 matches, which were spread out from 12 July to 25 September. And although they won five of their first six fixtures, matters deteriorated thereafter with the visitors losing the Test series by 3–0, with their only consolation being a 3–3 draw at Port Elizabeth in the third of the four contests. On the party’s return, two of their number, the Heriot’s back Roy Muir Kinnear and Aspatria’s Thomas Holliday, switched codes to rugby league, and there were approaches made to several others in the squad. Yet although Hawick would increasingly become a favourite destination for the professional sport’s scouts, Davies shared the opinion of most of his compatriots that union was the superior version of rugby, and he reckoned he was better off as an amateur in the cut and thrust of the Border League, allied to the priceless opportunities to play in a gifted Scotland ensemble. As with so many of his contemporaries, he was an unassuming character off the pitch, and the thrills of a packed Mansfield Park or Murrayfield were sufficient reward for his endeavour. These fellows had no interest in such modern notions as celebrity or banging out a ghosted biography. On the contrary, as Jim Renwick told me, in matter-of-fact fashion: ‘You thought you were lucky if you were chosen to play for Hawick and you gave it everything you had, because you knew that if you didn’t perform to the best of your abilities, you weren’t just letting yourself down, but your community as well. Fame didn’t matter. What mattered was that you were playing for your town, your district, your country, and you knew you had to grab the chances when they came.’
That attitude was shared by the leading luminaries from the other Border clubs, who produced a clutch of inspirational players between the two world wars, individuals whose names still resonate in their towns, long after they departed this earth. Bryce, the pride of Philiphaugh, whose name might, in other circumstances, have entered the annals with the rest of the 1925 Grand Slam brigade, was a special performer, and yet had no grand pretensions. Indeed, judging by this account from the historian Walter Thomson, his gifts could easily have been overlooked at the very start of his career.
Willie Bryce arrived in Selkirk straight from school to learn the tweed trade in his uncle’s mill. A slight youth, wearing glasses, almost the first question asked of him was: ‘Do you play rugby?’ He admitted to a slight acquaintance with the game and was given his chance in a local Factory Cup seven-a-side tournament. Bryce was an immediate success. His team, St Mary’s Mill, simply romped through their ties and Bryce went straight into a navy blue jersey. The rest is part of Scotland’s rugby history.
Gaining his first cap against Wales in 1922, Bryce developed into one of the finest scrum-halves of all time. He was an automatic choice for his country for three seasons until an injury on the field brought his career to a premature end, though not before he had gained the rare distinction of captaining Scotland. Bryce then turned to hockey and won a further string of international honours, while he was considered unlucky not to gain a cap for Scotland at cricket as well. His example as a player and a sportsman did as much as any single factor to establish rugby as the dominant game in Selkirk.
His name might hardly be known outside of the Borders, but the accounts of Bryce’s displays in the Scottish cause brook no dissent: he was clearly exceptional, an individual blessed with vision and balance, poise and invention, who thrilled crowds as much as he scared the living daylights out of opponents. Precious few rugby players have the ability to win matches on their own – unlike in football, where one man’s hat-trick can prove the catalyst for victory – but Bryce came close in 1923 in Cardiff, where his brilliance helped the Scots recover from a losing position and record their first success in the city since 1890. Their ranks included the likes of Eric Liddell, the future Olympic sprint champion and subject of the film Chariots of Fire, but it was the ubiquitous Bryce who sizzled in the Principality, growing in influence as the battle continued, sparking havoc among the Welsh, and creating a plethora of chances for his back line, who eventually transformed an 8–3 deficit into an 11–8 win, with the home team dead on their feet by the end.
If Bryce had merely been a richly gifted practitioner of his arts, that would have sufficed for most men. But – and it is a theme which kept recurring when I spoke to Borderers about their icons and talismanic figures – he poured his heart and soul into Selkirk RFC, later serving as club president, whilst his son, Bill, turned out as hooker in the early sixties. That continuity has always been one of the most noticeable aspects of rugby in the South; the sense of the torch being handed on from one generation to another, and of families keeping a steady hand on the tiller, either on the field or behind the scenes in the committee room. This is not unique to the Borders, of course, and the Scottish game has profited from famous father-and-son combinations, such as John and Johnnie Beattie, and brothers-in-arms such as the Milnes, Calders, Browns and Hastingses. Yet, given the small population in communities such as Selkirk and Melrose, Kelso and Jedburgh, the townspeople needed to be able to recognise the importance of eschewing complacency and continually looking ten or twenty years down the line, and, thankfully, they did so. It meant that there were numerous cases of kith and kin embracing the oval ball. Some became famous in the wider world. Others were content to be local heroes, rousing themselves to prodigious exploits on their own patches. One such figure was Allan Smith, who helped Kelso to three Border League titles in the 1930s, and carried on supporting the ‘Black and Whites’ into his 90s. As Laing Speirs relates, he might not have been a world-class player, but this was a chap born to revel on a rugby pitch.
With a grandfather known as ‘Strong Bob’, the blacksmith who played for Kelso, and his father also a regular at the turn of the century, Allan came to the Kelso side with full understanding of what local pride was all about. He was a member of the side which won the League for the first time in 1930–31 and recalls the crowds of 3,000, which used to throng the field, ignoring the ropes and getting in the way of the action.
The personalities in the Kelso team included Tom ‘Tinkle’ Laidlaw, whose enthusiasm for training was lukewarm, to put it mildly. His preparations for any game generally included a pie and a bottle of beer. But he was a natural, according to Smith.
There may have been no professionalism in the 1930s and virtually nothing in the way of sponsorship, but there was one great incentive for young players to progress on the Kelso club scene. The treasurer at the time, Jock Laing, ruled that if you were in the first XV, you were given a high tea at away games, but if you were travelling with the seconds, the entertainment was scaled down to a plain tea.
Smith, an effective full-back with a natural aptitude for breaking tackles, was one of those individuals who felt blessed to have received the opportunity to parade his talent in front of the Borders people. Even nearly 60 years later, he could recollect precise details of various Border League encounters, while explaining that spectators were only charged two old pence admission for what usually turned into a stirring contest. No wonder they turned up in such multitudes – and there were instances of attendances in excess of 10,000 – when they could cheer (or jeer) such totemic characters as Kelso’s Bob Smith and Alex Cameron, Hawick’s Doug Davies and Jock Beattie, the Gala behemoth Jimmy Ferguson and the Selkirk powerhouse, Jack Waters. These were ferociously competitive customers, for whom the idea of taking a backward step was simply not an option.
They were also proud to play whenever they joined forces in a combined South team and, although the Scottish Inter-District championship did not come into existence until the 1950s, there were a number of illustrations of the exciting potential of a Border side, especially one which mixed Selkirk and Melrose’s artistry and élan with the barnstorming Hawick, Langholm and Kelso forwards, and flung in a soupçon of the pace which Gala and Jed-Forest frequently exhibited on their Sevens adventures.
In the winter of 1931, for example, the South’s elite locked horns with the touring South Africans at the Greenyards and earned a hugely creditable 0–0 draw in a match which they could have won, such were the quality and quintessential ingredients which the hosts exuded throughout the contest. This was no mediocre Springbok squad. On the contrary, Bennie Osler’s typically hard-tackling and defensive-minded personnel prevailed against all the Home Nations. They recorded 8–3 victories over Wales and Ireland before beating England and Scotland 7–0 and 6–3 respectively, and eventually won 23 [and drew two others] of their mammoth schedule of 26 games between October 1931 and January 1932.
Yet the Borders kept them at bay, fuelled by the tireless exertions of such warriors as Doug Davies and Jock Beattie and the Selkirk duo of Tom Brown and Jack Waters, the latter of whom was another individual to serve his region and country with distinction. And this was not the only occasion when the South produced exhilarating, no-holds-barred performances against the giants of the southern hemisphere. Their most famous achievement came 53 years later when the Scots famously got the better of the great Australian ensemble featuring Andrew Slack and his compatriots – the only defeat which the Wallabies endured on their visit to Britain and Ireland – but the South also drew with the South Africans during the controversial 1968–69 tour and beat the Aussies in the midst of the latter’s 1966–67 campaign. These tussles served up acts of individual brilliance from the home ranks, but, more importantly, testified to how well the cream of the Borders could rise to whatever challenges were placed in front of them. In which light, it is perhaps surprising that Scotland does not make more of these exploits, and particularly considering we never hear the end of Munster’s 1978 victory over the All Blacks.
Indeed, the South were mighty close to a win against the New Zealand tourists at a packed Mansfield Park in October 1935, before eventually succumbing 11–8, in a match which was marked by the robustness of both sides’ forward exchanges. This might not have been the best Kiwi contingent to have travelled to the northern hemisphere – as their defeats at the hands of Wales and England highlighted – but they were still good enough to beat Scotland 18–8 the following month, and the South could be proud of their endeavours. Here, as in so many other instances, they transcended any parochial concerns and amply demonstrated that the things which bonded them were more substantial than the local rivalry which came to the fore in the thick of Border League struggle. And it also helped that their selectors actually picked their best team on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, though, the same could not be said about Scotland in the years leading up to the Second World War, when they crashed like Wall Street, following the heady successes of the previous decade. On a positive note, they managed to secure another Triple Crown in 1933 and there was always the prospect of flashes of individual flair livening up the drabbest of international displays, but the Scots slipped into a losing habit and savoured victory only three times in 12 matches between 1934 and 1937. As Walter Thomson reported with a heavy heart, it did not help anybody that several of the Border clubs were enduring a rough patch, including Hawick, who regularly flirted with mediocrity – by their lofty own standards – during a miserable sequence of four wins in 14 matches, as Christmas was cancelled at Mansfield Park in 1937. With hindsight, these peaks and troughs should have been predicted given the slim resources at Scotland’s disposal, but that did not ease the pain of the fans, who faithfully paid their admission money, irrespective of past travails, forever travelling more in hope than expectation: a state which made the occasional triumph all the more worth celebrating.
It was also difficult to establish any continuity or plan for the future when the Scottish selection panel changed every season and their choices were often, at best, debatable. But there again, apart from the Border League, how could they judge who was the best in the country at any given time when there was no national league competition? These questions taxed the minds of many in the South and some of the local newspapers in the South became quite vocal on the subject, arguing that Kelso should have gained greater international recognition in the midst of their splendid exploits in the 1930s.
Nonetheless, nobody disputed the fashion in which Hawick’s Jock Beattie became one of the cornerstones of the Scottish pack throughout the 1930s on his way to amassing 23 international caps, which was a momentous haul in those days (and particularly given France’s exclusion from the Five Nations Championship, over allegations of professionalism, for most of the Teri’s career). Beattie was a fearsome opponent in his prime and it was remarked of him by the Border Advertiser that he would have run through a brick wall for Hawick and Scotland – ‘but especially Hawick!’ He made his debut against France in 1929, just a few months before they were temporarily booted out of the tournament, but he really came into his own in subsequent seasons and produced a string of juddering exhibitions of brawny forward play throughout his country’s Triple Crown triumph. The winning margins were all tight: England were edged out 3–0 at Murrayfield as the prelude to the Scots travelling to Dublin and Swansea and prevailing 8–6 and 11–3 respectively. But, in terms of commitment, nobody could begrudge them their success.
Beattie would not have known it at the time, but his exploits were an inspiration to one of the children who followed these matches, namely Bill McLaren, who was growing up in Hawick and had already contracted the rugby bug with a vengeance. ‘As an eight-year-old, I remember writing detailed accounts of fictional matches,’ he later recalled. ‘Scotland once beat the Rest of the World 85–11 and I think that I had Jock Beattie [that’s B-E-A-T-T-I-E] scoring three tries.’ McLaren’s grasp of detail and the minutiae of these contests was phenomenal and, despite his beloved Hawick struggling in the Border League for a number of seasons, the youngster took solace in journeying to all parts of Britain with his father, soaking up the atmosphere of international sport. He was there at Twickenham in 1936 for what proved to be Beattie’s swansong in a Scotland jersey, but it was another of his Mansfield Park comrades who suffered a worse afternoon. ‘Rob Barrie had to go off with a broken collarbone after just ten minutes and you could see that he was in agony. He was tackling the Sale wing, Hal Sever, who was a massive hulk of a man, and there were no substitutions in those days, so it looked as if it would be another painful visit to London for the Scots,’ said McLaren. ‘But they dug in and battled with everything they had and it made you proud to be there and watch their efforts, even with all the odds against them. They ended up losing 9–8, but they got a huge cheer from the crowd when they walked off at the finish and they deserved it.’
If that was a nerve-shredding encounter, there were sunnier dispositions on the next occasion when the Scots pitched up in London, two years later, with a team that had already defied expectations by defeating Wales 8–6 with a late penalty in Edinburgh, prior to dispatching the Irish by a comfortable margin of 23–14. That allowed them a crack at another Triple Crown, and two Borderers, Tom Dorward of Gala and John Hastie of Melrose, were among the ranks as they prepared for a contest which became famous for several reasons, not least because it was the first to be televised, but principally as a consequence of the fabulous display which was unleashed on the English by the mercurial Wilson Shaw, with whom this tussle will be forever inextricably linked.
Allan Massie recently painted a vivid picture of the game in The Scotsman.
It was a remarkable and memorable match. The English forwards did all that had been expected or feared, and opinions vary as to whether they won three or four times more ball than Scotland. But the Scottish back row of Duff, Young and Crawford spoiled and scavenged tirelessly, while Shaw ran as if he had been shot from a gun and the centres cut through [England’s defence] at will. The match was won 21–16. More tellingly, Scotland scored five tries, Shaw himself getting two of them, and England only managed one. Shaw was hailed as the greatest rugby player of his generation and he was carried shoulder-high in triumph from the field. The Triple Crown had been won by a team that was originally despised and despaired of. But then, after the victory over Wales, The Scotsman had declared that ‘Scottish rugby XVs come into existence to confound their critics or, often, to disillusion the hopeful’.
The next year, things were back to normal. With characteristic perversity, the selectors ignored the evidence of 1938 and shunted Shaw back to the wing. With him at No 10, the Scots had scored ten tries and won all three matches. In 1939, they lost all three.
This dramatic shift between soaring towards the stratosphere in one instant and suffering Icarus’ fate in the next, regularly beset the Scots, but if Shaw was the shining star, the contributions of the two unsung Borderers should not go unnoticed, especially in these pages. Dorward only gained five caps for his country, at scrum-half, and subsequently perished in the war in 1941, but gratefully seized his opportunity to be part of one of the most astonishing afternoons in Scotland’s rugby history and it could be argued that Shaw would not have had the chance to tear England apart if his half-back partner had been delivering him hospital passes. His brother, Arthur, also stood proudly behind the thistle, making 15 appearances between 1950 and 1957, and once again, as happened with a remarkable frequency, the family connection was maintained despite the ravages of conflict, and the Borders – and Scotland – gained hugely from the phenomenon.
John Hastie, for his part, never played for Scotland again after collecting what was his third cap at Twickenham, which makes one wonder how many performers in the modern era would have been discarded in these circumstances. Yet if the Melrose hooker felt aggrieved at his treatment, he was not inclined to go bleating to the press about it. As he and so many of his peers told the likes of Walter Thomson, they had never entered rugby in pursuit of Test recognition or getting their names in the Fourth Estate; they had done so for the pure, undiluted joy of picking up a rugby ball and working in unison with their allies in the Borders. And whether they earned one cap or 51, nobody could ever take it away from them once they had offered their all with the rest of their team-mates.
It was a simple philosophy, an approach forged on industry and camaraderie in the heat of sporting battle, allied to these staunch fellows’ collective ability to be inspired rather than terrified by representing their towns, their district and their country. As the 1930s reached their conclusion, there were far more important hostilities to worry about than mere games of rugby – and, just as in the first global conflict of 1914–18, where so many Borderers perished, there was a heavy toll on their numbers in the fight to save the free world. Ultimately, the powerful strands of family, faith and fighting for what was right mercifully prevailed, although every community suffered grievous casualties and many of their number returned with dreadful memories indelibly etched on their consciousness. They included a young Bill McLaren, who served in the Royal Artillery as a teenager from 1942 onwards. He recounted his memories in his autobiography, The Voice of Rugby, recalling one particular scene which was straight out of Dante’s Inferno.
Early one morning, in 1944, just after the sun had come up in Northern Italy [McLaren was involved in the bloody struggle for Monte Cassino], I was leading a group of men on a reconnaissance. I was looking for a gun position, which was one of my duties as a forward observance officer. As we came into a small town, we quickly became aware of a peculiar smell. It was a very strong, sweet, sickly sort of smell and it seemed to fill the air. It was winter, so we could discount the scent of overripe flowers wafting on the breeze. Any old soldier will already have a good idea of the source of this cloying stench. We moved carefully towards the town centre. Nobody seemed to be about. All we could see was destruction: buildings bombed and shattered, broken down and wrecked vehicles lying in the street. In the middle of the town, we turned a corner and saw a graveyard. What confronted me there was a sight that remained with me for ever.
There must have been, piled up on the ground within this one cemetery, around 1,500 dead Germans and Italians. The bodies lay there, frozen in their death throes, grotesquely contorted, one of top of the other and four or five deep. Both the smell and this nightmare vision were indescribable. Many of the corpses had had limbs blown off: there were men, women and children without feet or arms, children with legs missing. It was the most horrific thing I had ever seen in my life, indeed would ever see. I was 21.
Apparently, the Germans had put down a huge barrage and had hit the village, accidentally it was said. Once it was taken, they had dug in and, some time later, had confronted the advancing British Army. There had been an absolute bloodbath. Local men, women and children, as was all too vividly evident, had been caught up in the battle and paid a terrible price. The Germans, too, had been wiped out and their corpses lay, strewn in heaps in the graveyard, along with those of the townsfolk.
I had seen dead bodies before, since arriving in Italy, but nothing on this scale. Somehow, this pitiless slaughter seemed to encapsulate the greater conflict into which we had been dragged. It was a vision of hell on earth and we were right in the middle of it, watching our chums, our enemies and innocent civilians alike, losing their lives right in front of us. For weeks afterwards, I could not get that shocking image out of my mind, nor the stench of decaying bodies out of my nostrils. The boy I had been was gone. I suspect that he disappeared for ever on that awful morning.
Understandably, in these circumstances, when a semblance of normality was restored to life in Scotland and the rest of the planet in 1945 and beyond, it was with as much a huge sense of relief as anything else that rugby gradually became a high priority again for the South. Some people might believe that too much emphasis is placed on sport, and matters have definitely changed during the last ten or twenty years from the time when those who had witnessed atrocities, such as that encountered by McLaren, adopted a proper perspective towards games. There were no ‘tragedies’ or ‘disasters’ from McLaren at the mike. If somebody missed a tackle or sclaffed a penalty, it was unfortunate, nothing more.
Nonetheless, it was necessary for everybody to try and pick up the pieces of their lives and thank their lucky stars they were in a position to be able to countenance any kind of future. Soon enough, amid the rebuilding of towns and cities, and development of such innovations as the National Health Service, sport was on the agenda once more. At which point, we began to witness rugby’s progress towards modernisation, while affairs in the Borders were increasingly dominated by an all-conquering Hawick infantry.