A TOAST TO SELKIRK,
LANGHOLM AND GALA
THOSE WHO PLEDGE allegiance to Scottish football clubs other than Glasgow’s Old Firm giants will probably appreciate the lurking frustrations which were occasionally experienced by Hawick’s opponents in the midst of Border League battle. Season after season, regardless of the lashings of enterprise expended on the pitch, there was, more often than not, a familiar look about the champions, and they were usually wearing green. If the men and women who toiled away behind the scenes at such rugby citadels as Selkirk, Langholm and Gala had been so inclined, the easy thing would have been to admit they were scrapping for second best every winter, before hitching their carts to the Hawick bandwagon, and basking in the reflected glory of the Teris’ triumphal procession.
But thankfully, that defeatist idea never occurred to the army of volunteers who continually ploughed their time and effort into improving the standard of rugby at Philiphaugh, Milntown and Netherdale. On the contrary – and soccer aficionados will appreciate this too – the long fallow periods only made the occasional successes all the sweeter, because they had been achieved against the odds, and often in circumstances where other Borderers were waiting for them to fall flat on their faces with an almighty thud. Selkirk, for instance, hardly set the heather on fire in the years after the Second World War and there was little reason to suppose that they would suddenly unearth a squad which was capable of sweeping everything before them. But they did and their exploits in the 1952–53 campaign, where they surged to the double by winning both the Border League and the unofficial Scottish championship, were as exceptional as they were surprising. Indeed, though it happened nearly 60 years ago, the Souters still talk about it with dewy eyes, much as Aberdonians marvel about getting the better of Real Madrid in the European Cup Winners’ Cup final in 1983, or Partick Thistle aficionados reminisce how they famously trounced Jock Stein’s Celtic in the League Cup final of 1971.
At the time, their achievement elicited astonishment and time has not dulled the feeling of wonder at how Selkirk, however briefly, glittered in the spotlight. Yet, if some of their fans thought they were in dreamland, there was nothing airy-fairy about the stalwart brethren who turned romantic reveries into hard reality. Consider, for instance, the fact that the side was captained by George Downie, a man steeped in Selkirk lore, and who also happened to be one of the toughest and most unstinting props in the Borders of that vintage. This fellow had fought for his country in the RAF, in which light he was hardly going to be fazed by rousing his rugby troops to new levels of intensity and lion-hearted resolve.
One man does not make a team, of course, but Downie had willing confrères in the front row in the guise of redoubtable hooker Jock King and Jim ‘Basher’ Inglis at loose-head, with the latter’s nickname providing an ample confirmation of his disinclination to take any nonsense from his rivals. And this trio were a fearsome sight for anybody in their homeland, even the likes of Hawick legends of the calibre of Hugh McLeod, so much so that King and Inglis both gained Scotland honours between 1952 and 1955 while there were plenty of observers in the Borders who were mystified as to why the prowling, growling Downie was denied his opportunity at international level. But there again, this was the period when the Scots were enduring such a desperate spell on the Test stage, with 17 matches lost in a three-year stretch, that the words: ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’, might as well have been engraved on the gates of Murrayfield.
However, if there was misery on the wider stage, Selkirk’s supporters were entitled to focus on the feats of their own heroes, who boasted formidable scrummaging power, but also dangerous backs, including Archie Little, a No 15 with the confidence to launch counter-offensives from his own territory, and whom Bill McLaren would probably have described as ‘running like a scalded stag’ when he was in the mood to test the pace and defensive skills of opposing teams. There were others, such as the Cowan brothers, Stanley and Jack, whose qualities not only became common knowledge throughout the Borders, but also – regrettably for the Philip-haugh faithful – filtered down to the world of rugby league, whose scouts soon came calling, but not before Selkirk had bewitched and bewildered the rest of Scotland with their own brand of high-intensity rugby.
Perhaps part of the reason for their success stemmed from the limited expectations which surrounded the team at the start of the 1952–53 season. It was not that they had fallen off the radar exactly, but they hardly commenced with an all-conquering flourish, losing two of their opening five fixtures and the second of these was a comprehensive 37–5 demolition at the hands of Edinburgh club, Royal High School FPs. So far, so familiar for the long-suffering Selkirk fraternity, and yet gradually, Downie and his colleagues began to put the squeeze on their opponents, recording a meritorious 8–0 win against Hawick, even as the winter arrived with a vengeance and frost forced the cancellation of a string ofmatches throughout the country. That might have stalled the momentum of lesser individuals, but it seemed to invigorate Selkirk, who signalled their potential with consecutive wins over Glasgow High School, Dunfermline, Jed-Forest and Edinburgh Accies, which forced even the most sceptical followers in the town to acknowledge that Selkirk were a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, even though Hawick gained revenge in the corresponding game by securing a narrow 6–0 victory, Downie’s personnel had shrugged off their earlier inconsistency and embarked on a sequence of five straight wins and that run was only brought to an end when they slipped to a 3–0 defeat at Gala.
By now, the excitement in the town was palpable and the likes of the Border Advertiser began to engage in heady praise of the Selkirk lieges. The captain’s endeavours brought him glowing reviews from Walter Thomson, while other, anonymous scribes delved into their dictionaries for synonyms for ‘industrious’ and ‘immovable’. March turned to April, and when Selkirk orchestrated back-to-back triumphs over Melrose and Watsonians by 11–0 and 11–6, their strengths were no longer in question. What remained unclear was whether a club, which had experienced few reasons to be cheerful for more years than they cared to remember, could handle the pressure and complete the job.
This was heady stuff, particularly for a support base that had gradually grown inured to disappointment. And, as the proud Souter Allan Massie wrote in his book 100 Years of Selkirk Rugby, Downie and his men had turned into a big box-office attraction.
There were still obstacles to be cleared and Gala were still in the running for the ‘double’ themselves. So when they came to Philiphaugh for an evening game, excitement was intense and the ground saw a crowd of over 4000 (and gate receipts of £132 – a record then – almost £2000 in today’s values). If ever a game proved that you don’t need high scoring and lots of tries to produce gripping rugby, this was it. Selkirk took an early lead when Tom Brown, playing in the centre, dropped a goal, but thereafter, Gala were on top. Wave after wave of attacks threatened the Selkirk line, but the defence held firm, and time and again, Archie Little appeared, as Walter Thomson recalled, ‘from nowhere to pluck the ball from the air and drive Gala back a few precious yards.’ The Souters displayed the spirit of Flodden where, as Sir Walter Scott wrote:
‘The stubborn spear-men still made good,
Their dark, impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell …’
But this time, the outcome was triumph, not disaster. The line held, Gala were repulsed, and when the final whistle sounded, Selkirk had won.
There remained Jed-Forest to be beaten before the titles were securely in the Souters’ grip and, over the years, Selkirk have always found Jed among their hardest opponents. This match was no exception, a game that stretched the already taut nerves of those at Philiphaugh. Again, Selkirk took the lead, this time from a long-range penalty goal, which was kicked by Archie Little. Again, they could not add to that score. Again, they were thrown back on doughty defence. Again, the tension held to the final minute when Jed-Forest attempted a mighty drop goal, which flew high towards the Selkirk posts, but happily just wide. The game was over and, at last, after almost fifty years, Selkirk were [unofficial] Scottish and Border [League] champions.
It was a marvellous achievement and the community rightly basked in the warm glow of what had been an incredibly hard-fought campaign. Downie’s players had been forced to withstand concerted pressure during these last brace of fixtures and had responded with the kind of sporting heroism which only happens once in a blue moon. They were a disparate bunch, ranging from the unprepossessing bish and bosh of ‘Basher’ and his front-row confrères, to the fleetness of foot of Little, the dexterity of Brown, and the athleticism and aggression of the Cowan siblings. As for the captain, Downie, this was his apotheosis and one has to wonder how his qualities could have been overlooked by Scotland, or at least until one recollects the vagaries which existed within the selection panel of that era. This was 1953 and there were other exploits which commanded bigger headlines in the rest of the British press, such as the FA Cup final between Bolton Wanderers and Blackpool, which the latter won 4–3, courtesy of a posterity-sealing performance from Stanley Matthews and a Stan Mortensen hat-trick; the 26-time champion jockey Gordon Richards’ only victory in the Epsom Derby on the massive horse, Pinza; and, of course, it was the year of the Coronation. But, as somebody who has been in Melrose, in Hawick, in Kelso, when rugby titles have been won, and especially in against-the-odds struggles, it is not too much of an exaggeration to declare that Selkirk’s exploits were the main source of jubilation in a never-to-be-forgotten spring.
These kinds of triumphs were to be relished – and the celebrations were raucous. Yet, in many instances where sporting underdogs prevail and relish their time in the spotlight, their success turns out to be the prelude to a reality check, and so it proved with Selkirk. Some of their more pessimistic followers had even expressed reservations about the overall quality of the 52–53 brigade in their hour of victory, and, bit by bit, the victorious squad was dismantled by a combination of factors. Downie, a banker by profession, had to relocate to Dunfermline and subsequently represented the North of Scotland. Stanley Cowan was tempted by the offer of financial security and switched to the league code, whilst his brother, Jack, moved to London and joined the Metropolitan Police. Several of the younger players were called up for national service; a few of the older personnel, perhaps recognising that they were unlikely to replicate the fantastic achievements of lifting the double, elected to retire, or at least bow out of first XV action. But it was no disgrace to revert subsequently to the status of middle-of-the-table honest artisans, who occasionally performed above expectations. And, ultimately, the fact was cast in stone that nobody could ever take the glories of that sweet winter away from them.
There were similar heroics later in the 1958–59 campaign when Langholm finally made the breakthrough, which generations of players had striven for, by lifting the Border League for the first time since their foundation, all of 88 years earlier. Their teams had always been renowned for their battling qualities and the club itself had made a virtue of their modest resources – particularly in comparison with the likes of Hawick – so there was a sense of shared pride in the Borders at the fashion in which the Milntown personnel dominated that season, not merely gaining ascendancy over their rivals in the South, but posting records which earned them coverage the length and breadth of Britain.
Much of their success derived – as elsewhere in the Borders – from the influence of a number of families, including the Armstrongs, Copelands and McGlassons, whose exertions ensured that the club was capable of surviving through turbulent times. By the late 1950s, Langholm had assembled a potent squad, which featured such flinty characters as Christy Elliot, Jimmy Maxwell and Tony Grieve, and they started recording some impressive results, especially once Ernie Michie, a former British and Irish Lion and the human equivalent of Mount Rushmore, travelled down to the Borders to work in the forestry industry and lent his myriad talents to the Langholm cause. In many respects, Michie was the missing link for whom the club had been patiently waiting and was one of the pivotal performers when they began to dazzle in the autumn of 1958.
As with Selkirk, everything just clicked into gear and the rest of the country bore the brunt. The Souters were the first to experience the ferocity of the Langholm hurricane, blown away by a 40-point margin. Then, one by one, Melrose, Hawick, Gala and Jed-Forest came off second best against Michie and his confrères, whose forwards created the platform for a string of emphatic victories. Christy Elliot was consistently outstanding, both in his kicking duties and in discombobulating rival back lines, Jimmy Maxwell glittered with or without the ball, John Armstrong oozed class and solidity in the fullback berth, and the cumulative impact of these performers meant that when the national press listed the league tables at the climax of the season, Langholm stood out as the only one (of 420) who had avoided defeat throughout the entire season. They demonstrated their quality on the wider stage when they overcame a powerful London Scottish contingent in the Borders, with Michie once again to the fore, urging on his troops, seemingly covering every blade of grass, and generally exhibiting the sort of powers which belong in the pages of comic books, while his club sped towards the title.
Yet, if he was a source of inspiration, so was the captain, Jimmy Maxwell, who constantly hunted down rivals and tackled as if his very life depended on it. Once or twice as the winter progressed there were difficult afternoons, where they might have relinquished their unbeaten record, and there were four draws in the run, which testified to the number of occasions when they were involved in hard-fought wars of attrition. But, undaunted by the knowledge they were – to paraphrase Jim Kirk – boldly going where none of their fathers or grandfathers had gone before, the Milntown militia marched on. Others in the South kept awaiting a slip-up, or a hint of vulnerability, but it never materialised. On the contrary, Langholm’s members grew in stature as the spring arrived, as if appreciating they were now within touching distance of feats which would live for posterity.
In the end, it boiled down to a fraught visit to the Greenyards to tackle Melrose on an April evening in 1959, with the visitors being cheered on by a massive travelling support, who probably realised that seasons such as this might be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. They were made to fret for sustained passages of the match, which was scarcely a classic, and the outcome remained in doubt until the denouement, with both clubs stuttering and sparkling at various stages of the encounter. In their defence, Langholm had never remotely been in this situation before, of chasing both the Border title and the unofficial Scottish championship crown, and, unusually, their pack struggled against their Melrose counterparts. The visitors did manage to take the lead after 15 minutes with a long-range penalty from Elliot, but Alec Hastie responded with a superb individual try, and that was how it stayed until a few moments before the break, when Elliot landed another kick to push his side 6–3 in front. Yet there was little between the combatants and that pattern continued when the action resumed, with the hosts’ Andrew Hewat replying with another fine try, following Elliot’s third successful kick at goal. That proved the catalyst for an almighty Melrose surge and their opponents were forced to dig deep into their reserves of commitment and could have been cruelly denied at the death when the dangerous Hastie attempted an opportunistic drop goal, which went only narrowly wide of its target.
You could have sliced the tension with a knife as Melrose kept attacking. But finally, with the visiting fans anxiously counting down the clock, the game finished. Langholm had prevailed 9–6, and their players, officials and supporters rejoiced. The party carried on into the next morning and the day after that. This was their dual triumph, their chance to revel in the midst of being showered with honours which normally went to Hawick and the bigger communities in the Borders. When they eventually escaped the attention of well-wishers and returned to their own community, the details of the famous victory had already filtered back to Langholm, and there were 1,500 of their townsfolk on the streets, all waiting to acclaim their rugby heroes.
The team’s labours had yielded fitting rewards, both within their district and throughout the rest of their homeland, and nobody with any sense of sporting theatre could possibly have begrudged Langholm this belated recognition. After all, they had been the first club to come together in the Borders and it must have been as frustrating to be the trailblazers and find themselves being eclipsed by the rest, as it is for the pacemaker in a long-distance athletics race, who leads for most of the journey, only to be swept aside on the last lap. Understandably, therefore, the proud men who participated on that hallelujah trail have clung to the memories of that wonderful year and one of those in the throng, winger John Smith, told me about his experiences with Langholm’s finest.
It is now 52 years since we were champions of Scotland and the Borders, yet to the players who were involved in that historical season, it seems like only yesterday. That season will never be forgotten in the Muckle Toon because, as if winning the unofficial title and the Border League was not enough, the Milntown side also beat the mighty London Scottish with all their internationalists, and we were the only undefeated team in Britain for the season. We also won our own Sevens to add to the Selkirk Sevens Cup and had a record of: played 26, won 22, drawn 4. Points for 309, points against 81.
I was not a regular in the team, being one of the younger members, but reserves were needed at times when the leading players were either in action for the South or injured, and the whole squad, which only totalled 25, played their part in making history for the club. Everything just seemed to click into place that season when Ernie Michie, who originally played for Aberdeen Grammar School [and was capped 15 times at lock from 1954–57], came down to the town. He had only recently returned from a tour with the Lions in South Africa, and he brought us terrific knowledge of forward play.
Michie joined up with the captain Jim Maxwell, who was unlucky to only get the one cap in 1957 in a snowstorm. Christy Elliot was another stalwart in the backs and got his first of 12 caps in 1958. The youngest in the squad was his brother, Tom, and like myself, he was reserve for the wing. He later switched to back-row forward and was capped five times for his country between 1968 and 1970. I missed several midweek games at the end of the season because of injury, and would possibly not have been in the side anyway for the championship decider at Melrose which Langholm won 9–6, with a massive crowd attending the night match. But I was on the team bus that evening, along with my mate John Armstrong, who was the team’s regular full-back, but was also out injured.
The memories of that night will remain forever, from the moment that Hector Monro, the Border League president, who later became an MP [and future sports minister], and was a former Langholm player, presented the cup to our skipper, Jim Maxwell. After celebrating for a while in Melrose, the bus eventually arrived back in Langholm and it was an amazing sight which we witnessed. The two local bands met the bus on the outskirts of the town and played us down a thronged High Street, which must have brought every resident out, and there were loud cheers as the players embarked towards the Town Hall. It was one of those occasions where you understood exactly how much rugby meant to the people in the town and, to be honest, it sent shivers up all our spines.
Later that year, the Town Council held a civic reception for the players at the Ashley Bank Hotel and there was a celebration for the club in the Eskdale Hotel. There was also the joy of the players getting together, one last time in that historic season, for a photo session. Sadly, some have passed away over the years, but it was great the championship squad were special guests at the Langholm rugby dinner in 2009, with Tom Elliot and John Beattie making it back from overseas. In the same year, the Rotary Club also invited the players to a special function where the BBC’s Andrew Cotter was the guest speaker. His grandfather, Jimmy, who played for Scotland, was the minister at Langholm Parish Church for a number of years and was greatly involved with the club.
There are obviously many memories from such a successful season, such as beating all the Border League teams. Yet what sticks in my memory, as much as anything, was playing in a 3–3 draw, with one try each, against a strong Edinburgh Accies side at Raeburn Place, with Scotland half-backs Tom McClung and Stan Coughtrie playing for the opposition and making sure we had to be on our toes. McClung continually thumped huge up-and-unders at our full-back, John Armstrong, and I kept racing behind him from the wing to cover any mishaps, but he never flinched and you could have sworn that the ball would come down with snow on it. It was that kind of attitude which helped us to stick together, through thick and thin, and it was a terrific club to play for.
It was not surprising that Langholm were unable to maintain their success in the following years. Some of their leading lights retired, while they were no longer an unknown quantity for rivals and we were entering the period when Hawick began establishing a stranglehold, not merely in the Borders, but over the whole country. Yet, as the local newspapers reported, there were other noteworthy achievements in the future, including a commendable victory against the Green Machine at Mansfield Park in 1972 – when Christy Elliot, in his 22nd season at the club, scored the game’s only try – and precious few opponents have ever relished the journey to Milntown in the dead of winter.
These tales of the unexpected prevented Borders rugby from becoming stale, and even at the height of Hawick’s powers, there were afternoons, and even seasons, when they bumped into an immovable object. Such a fate befell them in 1966–67, when they had to surrender the limelight to their near, and not so dear, colleagues at Gala, who had sparkled only fitfully in the Border League, but stamped their authority all over a campaign in which they combined prolific try-scoring feats with some parsimonious defence, which defied almost anything which opponents could fling at them.
This was a fiercely formidable Netherdale collective; a multifarious band of brothers, who were superbly organised and adroitly captained by the pivotal figure of John Gray, who excelled in the second row alongside a sedulous pack, which habitually gained sufficient possession to release their mesmerising back line, which featured such luminaries as Duncan Paterson, Jock Turner and Peter Townsend, who nowadays might be better known as the father of Gregor, but was a quicksilver performer in his own right. Considering the pace and panache which they had at their disposal, Gala’s trophy-winning success on the Sevens circuit was only to be anticipated.
But this ensemble was more than just a serious force in the abbreviated version of the game, as they demonstrated by amassing 115 points in their first three matches of the 1966–67 fixture schedule. Their ability to unlock rivals with individual acts of derring-do was underpinned by the Scrooge-like tightness of their cover, which saw them conceding only a paltry nine points in their opening four Border League matches. Indeed, from early in the campaign, it was clear that Gray and his charges were the team to beat. And, as the skipper told me: ‘We had the attitude that if we played to our potential, we could leave other sides to worry about us. There had been previous years where Hawick had virtually won matches before they even took the field, because their opponents didn’t really believe that they could beat them. So we talked about what we could do to change things and one of the most obvious things was to concentrate fully on our own game and not worry about the other clubs. It worked to pretty good effect, because we came racing out of the blocks and, once you have built up momentum, that is half the battle.’
Gray’s personnel essentially seized the initiative and clung on thereafter, on their way to dishing out a series of emphatic beatings to the likes of Melrose and Jed-Forest and subsequently gained a major psychological advantage when they defeated Hawick, as they wrested control of the league away from the other contenders. Not even a mounting injury list could dent their advance – although there were understandable concerns about the long-term absence of Paterson, one of the most elusive No 9s of his generation–but, whatever problems arose, Gala responded to the challenge and they ventured to Poynder Park on the penultimate day of the season, aware that victory over Kelso would earn them their first Border League crown since they tied for the title with Melrose in 1949–50.
Predictably, tension surrounded this contest, not least because Gala’s pre-Christmas dominance had gradually ebbed away, to the stage where their earlier prowess was replaced by a fragility which has often surfaced around Netherdale teams. John Dawson explained this tale of two halves succinctly in his book The Ambassadors.
Up to the end of December, Gala played and looked like a championship side and the Maroons were all set for the Scottish and Border League titles. In the two tables, up to this stage of the season, Gala had played 16, won 13, lost two and drawn once. But the second half of the season brought mixed blessings, and they only had themselves to blame [no sympathy for injuries here!] for letting the double slip from their grasp. The Braw Lads just could not overcome the challenge of the city clubs. After New Year, 10 matches were played, four were lost, with two drawn, and only four were won.
Gala played attractive rugby and they proved to be crowd-pleasers, especially in Border League games. In the first 16 matches, a total of 63 tries were recorded, whereby, in the second half of the campaign, only 13 tries were scored in 10 matches. Five of these tries came from one game. In four of the others, Gala failed to score any tries.
The contrast was remarkable, but there again, it should not be forgotten that Gray’s side were missing the influential Jock Turner for nine of these contests while Paterson was out of commission for seven – and five of them in a row – and they only had access to a full-strength XV on a handful of occasions, and proved their worth in these tussles. Yet, in these circumstances, one could comprehend why many Gala supporters were anxious in the build-up to the potential title-decider with Kelso. Their heroes had flattered to deceive too often in the past for the diehards to take anything for granted and they appreciated that Kelso would provide stern resistance. But, as it transpired, there was to be no anticlimax. Instead, as Peter Donald wrote in the Scottish Daily Mail on 6 March 1967, it was their rivals who were left questioning their decision-making at the death.
Kelso held a post-mortem at the weekend on a mistake that helped Gala to win the Border League title at Poynder Park. The mistake was made before Saturday’s match when the home team won the toss and elected to play AGAINST the wind in the first half. Kelso officials were amazed at the decision. Gala, needles to say, were delighted and proceeded to take full advantage by harnessing the strong wind and building up a 9–0 first-half lead. They held on to that until five minutes from the end, when Drew Wood went over for Kelso’s try, which was converted by Jock Common.
Gala thus clinched the title – their first outright win in 45 years – with nine wins and a draw from 11 games. Their twelfth fixture, a postponed game with Selkirk, will not now be played, as no other side is within reach of Gala’s 19 points. Nervous tension, the near gale-force wind and injuries combined to deprive this Poynder Park occasion of much of its entertainment value. The Gala players have been on tenterhooks for the past month – and their form has undoubtedly suffered. This has probably also contributed to Scotland centre Jock Turner’s indifferent displays of late. His form, at fly-half for his club, has been mixed, and Saturday’s display would not encourage the national selectors.
At the same time, one must not lose sight of the fact that Turner won the game for Gala with two penalty goals and a drop goal, and his play was interspersed with some characteristically neat covering and touch kicking. It can have been of little help to Turner’s form that he has had to play alternately with two scrum-halves, Jim Dobson and Lyall Houghton, during Duncan Paterson’s enforced absence. Houghton suffered slightly on Saturday through the lack of cover afforded him by his forwards, who seemed to think their job ended once they had effectively bottled up the Kelso halves. Kelso, however, missed the inspiring influence of former cap Charlie Stewart, who was out with a leg injury, and their cause was not helped by a first-half injury to young Brian Kelly, who deputised for Stewart. He played for most of the match with a heavily-bandaged right knee. This took some of the sting out of the Kelso forwards, who could never get on top of the Gala pack. Scott Wilkinson and John Gray won their team a lot of ball from the line-out and even when Kelso did get possession here or from the set scrum, their young backs seemed limited to one idea – the inside break of Alan Tait.
There is not much here about what happened in the match itself and yet, as Gray told me, it was a genuinely helter-skelter affair, with plenty of barn-stopping tackles, chances for both clubs to profit on the weather-induced mistakes of their rivals, and a collective frustration at the finish that neither side had done themselves justice. The Border Advertiser was not the only newspaper to run analytical articles, discussing whether Gala had been ‘lucky to win the league’. This, surprisingly enough, focused as much on the victors’ perceived collapse in the second half of the season as it did on the excellence which they had shown while winning their first seven fixtures. It was a negative slant on what had been a creditable achievement by Gray’s injury-depleted squad and perhaps demonstrated that negative sports reporting in Scotland did not start with the collapse of Ally’s Tartan Army in Argentina in 1978.
At any rate, nobody around Netherdale was inclined to waste too much time worrying about these supposed deficiencies. Irrespective of the gripes from their opponents, the trophy was in their cabinet and they had orchestrated more wins than anybody else during the course of the competition. So what was there to complain about? On the contrary, it was time for the Sevens to usher in the dawn of spring, whereupon Gala, bolstered by the presence of their electrifying backs, followed up their success in the 15-a-side game with triumph in the abbreviated format. In short, this was a golden campaign for the Maroons, and three of their number – Jock Turner, Les Rodger and Scott Wilkinson – went to South Africa during the summer with the Scottish Border Club and enjoyed their visit to the Cape. Gray, one of the linchpins of his club’s success, was one of the reserve pool of players for the tour, and was unfortunate not to be included in the party. But at least he had the satisfaction, not only of leading his warriors to their first title for two generations, but also of later helping to bring into the world a son called Richie, who would subsequently maintain the family tradition by captaining the Gala side which snaffled another league crown in fabled fashion 31 years later.
That pattern of ‘like father, like son’ was one of the most heartening aspects of the Borderers’ attitude to rugby and it crops up time and again in the chronicles as an affirmation of the manner in which the torch was passed on from one generation to another. Less defensible, though, was the flippancy with which the South continued to maintain sporting relations with South Africa, whose apartheid philosophy had become common knowledge the longer that the 1960s advanced. This notoriously sparked the cancellation of England’s cricket tour to the Republic in the winter of 1968, when the inclusion of Basil D’Oliveira was opposed by the South African prime minister, B J Vorster, setting in motion a chain of events which led to the country being banned from future Olympic Games. It was facile to argue, as some people did, that ‘sport and politics don’t mix’ – of course they do and always have done – and yet the union code in particular continued to lend succour to the Springboks, after almost every other sport had cast Vorster and his ruling party’s discriminatory policies into the wilderness.
This showed Scottish rugby in an unflattering light and it was not the sole issue that provoked controversy within the sport and wider society. This might be a celebration of the Borders, but it will not suffice to pretend that these things never happened.