Alex James Hastie: rugby internationalist
Published on 12 Jun 2010

Eck Hastie, who has died, aged 74, after a lengthy battle against heart disease, was one half of arguably Scotland’s finest club half-back pairing.

Only the legendary Glasgow Academicals unit of the 1920s, stand off Herbert Waddell and scrum half Jimmy Nelson, stands comparison with Hastie and his long-time club partner David Chisholm.

Both pairings also starred together for Scotland, where Hastie and Chisholm left a lasting legacy – what would Andy Robinson give today for a half-back unit which was undefeated in its first 10 outings together, which included matches against touring Springboks and Wallabies XVs?

Also, the tales of Hastie and Chisholm’s exploits for the South of Scotland helped inspire their successors as outstanding Borders half-back pairings: Roy Laidlaw and John Rutherford and Gary Armstrong and Craig Chalmers.

Hastie is of course a Melrose icon, not a bad feat for a “Teri”. He was indeed born in Hawick, although raised in Melrose and schooled at Melrose Grammar School. He learned his rugby at the Greenyards, rising from schoolboy wannabe, via 11 seasons as a first-team regular, to later service as coach of Melrose Colts before continuing, for as long as his health allowed, to follow the club from the sidelines.

He played 239 times for the club, scoring 75 tries and one dropped goal, for a career total of 228 points. Not bad for an individual, but his name will always be mentioned in tandem with that of Chisholm.

They were barely established at club level before Hastie got his first cap, against Wales, at Murrayfield, in February, 1961, taking over from Gala’s Brian Shillinglaw at scrum half. His was a winning debut; his second cap saw victory too, over Ireland, before tasting defeat in the Calcutta Cup match at Twickenham.

Hastie was then overlooked by the selectors until the Irish and English matches of 1964, both of which were won, with the latter game dubbed “Jim Telfer’s match” after Hastie’s club-mate grabbed two tries.

Hastie and Chisholm were at half back in both games, the start of their remarkable run of internationals together without tasting defeat – a rarity for Scotland teams.

Strangely, in spite of these successes, the duo was never picked together for every match in a ­season during their five-season run of 13 internationals as a half-back pairing.

Together they helped Scotland beat Australia and South Africa, while they never lost to England when playing together.

They finally tasted defeat at the hands of New Zealand in 1967, in the match in which Colin Meads was controversially sent off after an incident involving Chisholm.

Losses to France and Wales, when Hastie and Chisholm went head-to-head with Gareth Edwards and Barry John, at the start of the 1968 Five Nations marked the end of Hastie’s Scotland career, but he was on the winning side in more than 60% of his internationals, a marvellous record.

Hastie and Chisholm also played together for the South of Scotland and the Barbarians, as well as for Melrose, for whom they were key players in Sevens, the short game which the club invented.

When they started, Hawick were the Kings of Sevens, before Gala’s “Magnificent Seven” of the late sixties and early seventies surpassed them, but, particularly when “Eck and Davie” were weaving their spells, Melrose could never be discounted.

Hastie, of course, played in the strictly amateur days of rugby. He always had to balance his playing commitments with his day job as a painter and decorator.

Rugby was pretty much his passion, but, later in life, he caught the gardening bug. He was a devoted husband to Elizabeth, his wife of 47 years, a doting father to Shirley and Alan and a proud grandfather to his three grand-children.

His last years were blighted by illness, before his death at Borders General Hospital, on the outskirts of his beloved Melrose.

Individually he was a fine player, one of that long line of small, often scrawny Borders scrum halves, who looked as if they needed a good feed, but tackled and felled even the biggest forwards. They relished contact and seemed to give a non-stop commentary on the game, but, to quote Bill McLaren’s great phrase were “as slippery as a baggie up a Border burn”. The Voice of Rugby said that of Laidlaw; he might also have said it of Hastie.

Great though he was, however, Hastie was even greater when he had Chisholm outside him. Like Gareth Edwards with Barry John, Hastie could allegedly have found Chisholm with a pass in a blacked-out room.

Rugby internationalist;

Born 29 July, 1935;

died 7 June, 2010.

This article was originally posted on 12-Jun-2010, 06:38 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 12-Jun-2010, 07:19.