A warm welcome to our good friends Marr President Tony Peters, Vice President Glenn Davies, Kevin Quinn and all who have travelled the lang Scots miles from Troon today. The men from Fullarton have been our main rivals in recent seasons. We of course beat them in both the Play-off semi-final and the Cup Final last season but they got revenge in September when for some reason our boys “didn’t get off the bus”. Hawick haven’t lost since though and they will be determined to make up for that “bad day at the office”.
We had a very successful launch of our “Voices of Hawick Rugby” book on Wednesday night. It will make an ideal Christmas present. It costs £25 and is available in the Club shop or at Dorward’s, ILF Imaging, Bannerman Burke or Hawick Museum where the excellent Bill McLaren exhibition will be open until the end of the month.
This afternoon we held a very moving ceremony when our Club Captain Shawn Muir unveiled a seat in memory of the Hawick RFC players and members who paid the supreme sacrifice in the two great conflicts of last century. Take time to have a look at Bernie Armstrong’s superb craftsmanship. Shawn and Vice Captains Fraser and Kirk will be laying a wreath on behalf of the Club at the War Memorial tomorrow. There will be a collection on behalf of Scotland’s poppy appeal at the ground today and a minute’s silence before the game.
Before reaching the blessed state of retirement my day job gave me the immense privilege of taking Hawick High Schule pupils on pilgrimage to the First World War battlefields of Ypres and the Somme to pay our respects at the graves of the Hawick men who lie today far from Bonnie Teviotdale.
I have been greatly humbled to visit Gallipoli where 86 Hawick men laid down their lives on the fateful 12th of July, 1915 and to be often at Tyne Cot on Passchendaele Ridge, the biggest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the world. I was deeply conscious of the honour I was given on one occasion to recite the exhortation, Lawrence Binyon’s emotive words “They shall grow not old as we who are left grow old” at Ypres’s Menin Gate ceremony – an unforgettable memory to add to life’s rich store.
These battlefield tours, although obviously having a very serious purpose had their lighter moments. I have often stood in Vaulx Hill Cemetery by the grave of that great character Tom “Bottler” Wilson, a Hawick rugby household name in the Edwardian era, one of three brothers to die in the First World War. Bottler was a great joker and he actually got me out of a hole on one visit because we’d travelled south on the day that a lot of Robbie Dyes travelled north to watch Hawick play Dundee High Schule in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup and rashly over-confident, I had taken a supply of Hawick balls to pass round the bus to celebrate Hawick getting to Murrayfield only they didn’t and I found myself left with three tins of Hawick balls! To cut a long story short, at Bottler’s grave oo a’ sooked a Hawick ball and we left one with a wee cross in front of his headstone. I think Bottler would have had a laugh at that but been gey pleased forby. But the next time I was back, you’ll hardly believe this, somebody had pinched the Hawick ball!
“Autumn has come now to my Teviot valley,
Russet and gold leaves abound everywhere.
I walk through the park where the river runs gently
To tryst with the Slitrig, its journey to share.
A tear dims my eye as I view the memorial,
Head bowed, I remember how callants like me
Laid down their lives to ensure us our freedom
And lie now at Ypres and Gallipoli.”
Lest We Forget.
