Scotland's oldest rugby international dies, aged 101

Published on Monday 16 March 2009 20:58

SCOTLAND'S oldest surviving rugby internationalist, "Mac" Henderson, has died at the age of 101.

James McLaren Henderson won three caps for Scotland and always laughed at being a genuine rarity in the Scottish game – an internationalist who won every match. In the 1933 Four Nations Championship, Scotland defeated Wales, England and Ireland to lift their first Triple Crown in eight years and win the championship.

A farmer by trade, he was born on his father's farm at Elphinstone, East Lothian and spent three years working on New Zealand sheep stations. He and his wife, Janet, who died in 1973, started the famous Edinburgh restaurant business, Henderson's Salad Table, 47 years ago as a farm shop in Hanover Street, with a strong desire to encourage people to eat organically and use local produce. The business thrived and is now run by three of his children – Oliver, Catherine and Peter – expanding into a restaurant and, more recently, an art gallery, in Janet's name.

Mac, who had seven children with Janet, 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, celebrated his 100th birthday in the restaurant on 1 May, 2008. In an interview then, he spoke clearly of his days playing alongside Ian Smith, the renowned "Flying Scotsman" and 1933 captain, who holds the record of most Test tries jointly with Tony Stanger, and revealed that the late winger was a footballer before being persuaded to try rugby while at Oxford University by the legendary Scotland centre, GPS "Phil" Macpherson.

Mac spoke little of his own prowess, but those who knew him as a player felt that he would have won many more caps had it not been for his farming life and a serious knee injury he suffered while playing for the Barbarians.

He attended Elphinstone School in Tranent and then the Edinburgh Academy, and enjoyed a long association with Edinburgh Academicals.

After two years in an accountant's office, playing at wing- forward for Dunbar – a club he helped to found – and then the Accies, he left for New Zealand, where he spent nearly three years working at various sheep stations.

Mac returned to Scotland in 1930 and found that his fitness from farm work and his ability to grapple and hold sheep had enhanced his rugby ability.

He worked six days a week on the farm, but trained at nights at East Linton with a footballer, where the pair would push each other to become faster. It paid off as he became an ever-present for Accies and won a Scotland place for the 1933 season. His youngest brother, Ian, a prop, was capped 14 times either side of the Second World War, but Mac always felt guilt for having beaten his other brother, Ronnie, into the side when they both featured in a Scotland trial in 1932. They both were convinced that Ronnie would follow him, but injuries prevented the brother Mac believed to be the best rugby player of the lot from doing so.

Mac also played for the Barbarians, but suffered his serious knee injury against Cardiff. A tall, formidable figure, Henderson said: "It wouldn't have been so bad, but the boy I was tackling was the smallest player on the pitch!"

His rugby career at an end at 25, he threw himself into farming, taking on a number of farms in East Lothian – at one stage owning 1,100 acres – and the shop. He worked well beyond retiral age, and latterly lived in Gullane and Haddington, where he continued to champion local causes, including campaigning to have pedestrian crossings installed on busy streets, and occasionally visited his daugher, Sara, and her family in France.

He was back at Murrayfield in November to meet the current Scotland and New Zealand teams as a guest of the SRU and remained a great supporter of Accies and Scotland.

Scotland's oldest living internationalist is now Allan Roy, the surviving member of the 1938 Triple Crown-winning side.