John Gibson: Good goss from the two big players

Nomadic Norrie Rowan hadn’t been to Berlin before. So when he got back from a brief break there I expected some of the Germanic thing would have rubbed off.

But no clatter of goose-stepping jackboots down Niddry Street. No Adolf moustache, no Fuhrer lick of hair on his rugby-ravaged forehead. Nothing in Berlin’s restaurants to compared with the Dome’s mince and tatties.

He’d brought with him an old mate, former Kelso and Scotland hooker Gary Callander, and even to an emphatic non-aficionado of the foolhardy stop-and-start sport (every match should have a direct line to A and E at the Infirmary), their banter over lunch was a feast in itself.

Hawick legend Jim Renwick, well retired and revered for his 52 caps, recurringly figured in the conversation. “I’d rather be a lampost in Hawick than Provost of Gala,” Jim once pronounced.