Allan Massie: Why the Border League could make a comeback

A clash between rivals Hawick and Gala in the Border League in April 1973, the year that the national league came in. Picture: Ian Brand

Covid-19 has scuppered national events

Of course it’s still up in the air and dependent on the containment or, better, the elimination of Covid-19, and, while things look promising here, new outbreaks elsewhere – in Australia and Japan, for instance – put a bridle on optimism. There’s a horrid fear that with the lockdown lifted and economic activity renewed, we may see a second wave in the autumn. This might put paid to any prospect of rugby till sometime next year.

Nevertheless, the Guinness Pro14 is scheduled to get going five weeks or so from now, and the SRU has released proposals for the return of the amateur game early in October. They have also issued instructions to clubs telling them what must be done to make this possible. These instructions are complicated and mighty demanding. I can imagine committee men and women and club secretaries feeling in need of a stiff drink or two as they read and digest the document. There may be a few muttered oaths and expressions of incredulity. Nevertheless they will get on with it.

Even if all goes well there will be no national leagues this season. Well, clubs can live with that. There were no national leagues for the first hundred years and a bit more of club rugby in Scotland. For almost all clubs, all matches were “friendlies” – something that didn’t exclude intense and sometimes bitter rivalries. These often dated from schooldays since so many city clubs were “closed”, membership restricted to former pupils. If you were playing for Heriot’s FP’s you didn’t need the incentive of league points when you lined up against Watsonians or Edinburgh Accies.

Still there was one league in Scotland,the Border League. It was founded in 1901 and, for most of its history, had seven member clubs: Hawick, Gala, Melrose, Selkirk, Kelso, Jedforest and Langholm. It is the oldest Rugby Union league in the world. For a long time the SRU took a sour and suspicious view of it, fearing that competition of this sort might lead to creeping professionalism. But, with admirable obstinacy, the Border clubs held firm. Remembering the old amateur days, Bill McLaren thought that “the competitive element is several notches higher in a Border League game than in a match against a city club”. The crowd would be bigger, too, distances generally being short enough for away team supporters to turn up.

Indeed the Border League was so satisfactory and keenly contested that there was little enthusiasm from its members when, early in the 1970s, the SRU, for once showing the way to other unions, embarked on discussions about establishing national leagues in order to improve the standard of the club game. The Leagues did come and are generally held to have contributed to the success of the national team in the Eighties. This is probably true; it would not however be long before England followed the Scottish example.

Whatever doubts the Border League clubs had about the change, they would dominate the twenty years between the creation of the national league and the advent of professionalism in 1996, Hawick, Gala, Kelso and Melrose all being champions , and the Border clubs providing eleven of the Scotland XV that won the Grand Slam in 1984.

Nevertheless the fears expressed for the future of the Border League were justified. It wasn’t only that the National League became more important. It was also that the calendar was crowded, especially after the SRU added the Scottish Cup. National league fixtures could double as Border League ones but, with clubs in different divisions, it became difficult to find dates for home and away fixtures. Clubs and their members might be eager to keep the Border League going and to insist that they valued it, but often it was hard to find dates except sometimes on weekday evenings, and clubs couldn’t always field full-strength teams. The league officials juggled with the format.Other clubs – Peebles and Duns – were admitted. The league was split into two pools with a play-off. Some of this worked well. I remember a splendid final won by Selkirk on a lovely May evening at Langholm thanks to a couple of brilliant tries by a young Lee Jones. But nobody could pretend that the Border League was what it had been and probably only the keenest followers of the game could tell you who were the reigning champions.

Well,it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and the restrictions imposed as a result of the decidedly ill-wind that is Covid-19 may allow for a full coherent and meaningful Border League programme this year. This would be splendid and certainly popular. However to be truly meaningful in the way Border League matches traditionally were, you would need a committed crowd eager to watch good rugby but at least equally eager for victory. Whether this will be possible is another matter. One must hope it may be, for games might be a bit flat without spectators and clubs could certainly do with the gate money.

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