THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS


Birthplace of the greatest club event in the world
ALLAN MASSIE
ALL of us who love rugby owe a debt to two people: a boy at Rugby School "who picked up the ball and ran", and a Melrose butcher called Ned Haig. The former's name is commemorated in the William Webb Ellis Rugby World Cup; as for Ned Haig, well, as the international referee Jim Fleming put it a few years ago: "If it's the second Saturday in April, it must be the Melrose Sevens," a date on which young people, not only in the Borders, are well advised not to get married if
The story has been told often. The Melrose club was experiencing financial difficulties and Mr Haig came up with a fund-raising suggestion: an afternoon of athletic sports and abbreviated games of rugby, with only seven players instead of the usual 15. It was a stroke of genius. The "short game" became so popular that the athletic events were eventually dropped, though traditionalists, of whom there are not a few in the Borders, still speak of the "Sevens" as the "Sports".

Now the idea has spread worldwide, and there is an international sevens circuit, but Melrose is where it started and the Melrose Sevens remains the greatest club tournament in the world. Guest teams and even supporters fly in from all corners of the globe, from the Antipodes and South Africa, the USA and Fiji, Europe and this year even China, and congregate on a small town with a population of little more than 2,000 in the Scottish Borders. A phenomenon indeed.

It was very different 125 years ago when Haig sprang the idea on his fellow committee members. No aeroplanes then, not even motor cars. People came to Melrose by train, or horse-drawn carriages or gigs, perhaps some on horseback, many on foot, a handful maybe on that new- fangled thing, the velocipede or bicycle. It was a local Borders event.

The hosts won that first tournament, beating, appropriately, Gala in the final by one try to nothing. Gala had their revenge the following year, by the same score reversed. The Ladies Cup, as it is still known, went over the Border to Tynedale in 1886, but that was the last time it left the Scottish Borders until Watsonians took it to Edinburgh in 1905, and, to make matters worse, won it again the next two years. Edinburgh clubs had been competing since the mid-1890s, the Melrose Sports coinciding with an Edinburgh Spring Holiday weekend.

But then it was Hawick's turn, winning every tournament from 1908 to 1913. By this time the success of the Sevens was assured. The North British Railway Company ran "Specials" to the Sevens, and on the second Saturday of April 1912, sold 1,850 tickets in Hawick for the trip to Melrose. The star of that Hawick Seven was Walter Sutherland, international wing-three-quarter and the outstanding Borders back of the pre-1914 era. A lieutenant in the Seaforth Highlanders, he would be killed in the last weeks of the First World War.

The rugby in those days was still interspersed with athletics, place-kicking and drop-kicking competitions, and dribbling races (catch a modern forward able to compete in the last of these!) They took up so much time that the later stages of the rugby tournament were sometimes played in failing light – no British Summer Time in those days. In 1914, when Hawick were beaten in the final by Watsonians, the Hawick News complained that it had been "spoiled" by being played in near darkness, adding a touch sourly that "there is no doubt this happens too often at Melrose".

War didn't immediately put a stop to the Sevens. The "Khaki Sevens" were played in 1915, Lothian & Border Horse beating the 2/5 Royal Scots who, unlike recent sevens teams from that famous regiment, would not have benefited from the presence of Fijians in their ranks; but that was the end of them until 1919 when Hawick regained the Ladies Cup. They would dominate the 1920s, thanks to their famous half-back pair, Rab Storrie and Andra Bowie.

The doyen of Border rugby journalists Walter Thomson (for more than 50 years "Fly-Half" of the Sunday Post) remembered them as the slowest half-back pair in Hawick's history, adding however that "what they lacked in pace about the paddock they more than made up for in their speed of thought and their telepathic communication". He wrote that "they blossomed in the short game", making the point that the skills required in sevens are not precisely the same as in fifteens. Some credit the great London Scottish seven of the late 1950s and early 1960s with being the first to slow up the game, even retreating in possession, until a gap appeared through which to set free a speedster, but from all accounts Bowie and Storrie were up to this trick long before them.

The 23 tournaments from 1919 to 1941 saw the Border clubs' supremacy being challenged from Edinburgh. In fact the Ladies Cup was won ten times by Border clubs (Hawick 7, Gala 2, Melrose 1) and 13 by Edinburgh ones (Stewart's FP, Royal High, Heriot's FP, Watsonians, Edinburgh Accies and Edinburgh City Police – in 1941 – all triumphing). But there was usually a Borders club in the final to keep locals happy. Guest teams from over the border were rare, though London Scottish reached the final twice. Incidentally no Glasgow club has yet won the Melrose Sevens.

Melrose themselves would have to wait until after Adolf Hitler had been disposed of before they enjoyed a period of sustained success, winning three times in four years. Curiously the greatest Melrose player of the time, Charlie Drummond, appeared only in one of these tournaments: perhaps the salmon were running well on the other occasions, for, as Walter Thomson wrote, the club "could never be sure of his availability when the fish were moving". The amateur spirit.

The rugby at Melrose is always serious and, though as in any sevens tournament there are inevitably some poor ties – and a poor sevens tie can seem interminable – there are far more to delight and excite the crowd. There is humour too, "rum tales", as Walter Thomson put it, "of extra time and the heavy wear and tear it has caused". Once at Melrose, "an enthralled crowd heard an imploring cry from the depths of a maul. 'For Gawd's sake somebody – anybody – score!' The cry came from a medical man in a green jersey." Fortunately somebody obliged, a Melrose man as it happened.

Somebody always obliges at the Melrose Sports.

'Young people tripped the light fantastic toe'

AN EXTRACT from the Border Advertiser, 2 May 1883

FOOTBALL COMPETITION: An enormous crowd of spectators assembled, special trains having been run from Galashiels and Hawick and about 1,600 tickets being taken at Melrose during the day. From the former place alone there were 862 persons booked of whom 509 came by special train and the other 353 by ordinary train. Among those were a number of manufacturers and Melrose itself was represented by many of the gentry of the district. The Galashiels Brass Band, in uniform, came by the special train and discoursed music at intervals, the light fantastic toe being tripped by a good few of the young people to its strains.

As football has been the popular game of the season in the district, perhaps because its nature corresponds with the spirit of the hardy Borderer, the competition has been looked forward to with great interest, as most of the clubs of the district were expected to compete for the prize.

The excitement during the game was thus great and that portion of the spectators belonging to the various townships did all it could to encourage its club or clubs. Specially was this the case on the part of the Galashiels people who leaped the barrier on several occasions at critical points of play by their clubs and mixed among the players. To their credit be it said, however, no portion of spectators, however warm their feelings, interfered with any of the clubs.

Melrose and Gala were left to decide the result of the final. They played for 15 minutes, a fast and rough game, but as nothing was scored it was agreed by the captains to play another quarter of an hour.

After ten minutes play Melrose obtained a try and left the field without either trying to their goal or finishing the game, claiming the cup; but their title to do so was challenged by Gala on the ground that the game had not been finished. The proceedings were then brought to an abrupt conclusion and the spectators left the ground amid much noise and confusion.

NOTEFROM ED
Athletics persisted at Melrose Sevens over the years as your scribe remembers running at the event in 1970 in a race put on just before the final tie

This article was originally posted on 10-Apr-2008, 10:30 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 11-Apr-2008, 12:42.