Today we welcome our old friends from Goldenacre. Heriot’s have made a very good start to the season and currently lie in third place two points behind us so I am sure we are in for another close contest. Hopefully finger nails are beginning to grow back in again after last Saturday’s Musselburgh match!
Older members will remember with great fondness the New Year’s Day matches when the Nails came down to Mansfield Park. As mentioned in last week’s programme on Wednesday 8 November the “Voices of Hawick Rugby” book will be launched in the clubrooms. Everybody is welcome to come and buy their copy on the night. Herioters who have contributed to the book remember incidents from these games. Hamish More, a talented all-round sportsman who represented Scotland at cricket 45 times, has sadly died since
writing his piece.
“My best Mansfield memory was in the ‘Big Freeze’ winter of 1962 when deep snow prevented any rugby for many weeks. I and most of my team mates never imagined for a moment that the New Year’s Day game would be on. The roads to the Borders were impassable and the pitch would be snow covered and frozen hard. I duly went out celebrating with my great friend and scrum-half partner George Goddard and we attended many house parties that evening. I arrived home between 4.00 and 5.00 am to be greeted by my father saying there had been a phone call to say that we had to meet at Waverley Station as we would be travelling by train. The pitch had been covered by straw bales and the match was still on. The pitch was seriously hard and rutted all over. One of the first passes from my scrum-half, the aforesaid George Goddard, hit me on the chest and knocked me over. I was picked up off the ground by Oliver Grant who said “no tricks from you today young More”. “Yes, okay Mr Grant, sir” I replied. I weighed nine and a half stone at the time and Oliver was one of my heroes and considerably bigger and heavier than me. Naturally I complied.”
Andy Irvine recalled his first game against Hawick which was on New Year’s Day, 1971,
“Heriot’s very rarely won at Mansfield Park and certainly not in the New Year’s Day game, which was a big occasion. But we did win in 1971 by 17 points to 6. The pitch had been cleared of snow and Hawick lost Wat Davies through injury. There were no replacements in those days, so we won against fourteen men. I remember taking one conversion on the right-hand touchline and getting pelted by snowballs. Now, he denies it, but I am pretty sure it was Terence Froud because I could see a very red-faced cheeky wee boy with a mop of white hair. As I was about to take the kick, Jack Dun, the referee from Melrose, said to me, ‘Just stand still son. Let the k ids have their fun with the snowballs and then you put it between the sticks’. Later, we used to go to the Tower Hotel. The first bus would leave at midnight and the second at 1.30 in the morning. The atmosphere and the camaraderie were great.”
The temperature will be a bit warmer today, hopefully no snowballs, and fewer “sair heids” from over indulgence the night before but the fare on the pitch will be just as exciting as in days of yore. Here’s to another match to remember.
