Champions

I still like to buy a paper everyday and my paper of choice is usually The Scotsman. One of the sections I always look forward to is Allan Massie's column on the state of Scottish rugby. Yesterdays column had a more  personal angle than usual . Rugby sevens are an important part of the Borders rugby heritage as the game was invented here in Melrose and I spent many a spring Saturday afternoon travelling to all " The Sports" as they are known locally. Allan Massie recalls the best every game he remembers and it was a game I remember well. It was always a tradition at the sevens to invite other clubs along out with Scotland to be a guest club at the event. In 1969 one of the guest clubs was Loughborough Colleges which at the time were a teacher training establishment for PE. They had in their team Keith Fielding who I think had already played for England then who was an amazing player who played on the wing and was very fast. They had beaten every team they played that day by a bucket load until they played my team Gala in the final. Allan Massie recalls the second half as being totally one sided in favour of the home team as at the time if you scored a try the other team would kick off back to you. In the end LC team never had a chance as Gala never gave them the ball back. In the end they ran out easy winners scoring 6 or 7 tries. It was the start of a golden era for Gala as a sevens team as they won loads of tournaments and became the team to beat in the early 70's. My image today is one published to accompany Allan Massie's article and it features my favourite Gala player Dunc Paterson with the Gala Sevens trophy. Sadly Dunc passed away a few years ago and the paper printed a much larger version to accompany his obituary and It was then I noticed I was in the photo along with my good friend Mike Gammie. Mike is in the bottom RH corner and I am immediately behind him