Obituary: Donny Innes MB ChB - GP who managed to win caps in rugby before and after the Second World War

THE death of Dr John Robert Stephen Innes MB ChB – as “Donny” Innes was properly named – cuts down another of that precious tiny band of Scotsmen who represented the country on the sports field both before and after the Second World War.

In football, only the great Jimmy Delaney managed the feat. Innes was one of a mere five rugby internationalists to do it, the others being Chic Henderson of Edinburgh Academicals, “Copey” Murdoch of Hillhead HSFP and the two London Scottish forwards, RW Sampson and WB Young.

Innes won eight caps, split three/five between pre- and post-war seasons, and, considering he was only 22 and already capped when hostilities started, he clearly – notwithstanding his five wartime “caps” in services internationals and his “victory” cap against the Auld Enemy in 1946 – would have worn the navy blue jersey with the white thistle on more than a mere eight occasions.

He was an outstanding winger in the Aberdeen Grammar School first XV, moving into the former pupils’ side, and such was his promise the teenage Innes represented the North and Midlands against Jack Manchester’s Third All Blacks in 1935.

But by the time he won his first cap – as a late centre three-quarter call-up in a new-look Scottish XV, which lost 11-3 to Wales in Cardiff on 4 February, 1939 – Innes, at the time still completing his medical studies, was listed as playing for Aberdeen University.

He survived the Cardiff defeat, but was switched to the right wing for the trip to Dublin, during which he completed a break by the great Wilson Shaw and fellow student DJ Macrae of St Andrews University to score Scotland’s only points in their 12-3 loss to Ireland, before winning his third cap, again on the wing, in the 9-6 Calcutta Cup loss to England at Murrayfield.

War then intervened, and on completion of his medical studies, which included hospital service at Aberdeen’s Woodside and Foresterhill hospitals, Innes was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps, to gain the hands-on medical experience he would need when he returned to peacetime Aberdeen and began in general practice.

He found time for rugby during the war, playing in five “services” internationals, scoring a further three tries for Scotland, including two against England in a match at Leicester. With peace came the 1946 “victory” internationals, Innes appearing in the match against England.

The years 1940 to 1945, however, were mainly spent with 155 and 156 Field Ambulance units, with Major Innes, as he was to become, seeing active service with the 52nd Lowland Division during its push into Germany via Holland and Belgium after D-Day. He enjoyed his army years, continuing in the Territorial Army after the war.

But with the return of official international rugby in 1947 he was overlooked for the national team, before his recall as captain for the Murrayfield meeting with the touring Wallabies in November 1947. Scotland lost this match 16-7, but contemporary reports speak of Innes playing “a captain’s role” in an encouraging Scotland display.

He would lead the side throughout the Five Nations tournament of 1948. This began encouragingly with a 6-4 win over the French at Murrayfield, before defeats in Cardiff and Dublin continued the gloom which had hung over the game in Scotland during those austerity years.

However, in what was to be his final international, Innes enjoyed that comparatively rare honour of leading Scotland to victory in the Calcutta Cup, albeit against an England team reduced to 14 men after nine minutes and with one team member playing most of the game with a broken jaw. This wasn’t the greatest Calcutta Cup game ever, but Scotland victories in this fixture and particularly at that time are to be cherished.

He was, on the evidence of no less than the great Welsh rugby writer JBG Thomas, a fierce tackler. Thomas rated him the finest he had seen. But he knew his way to the try line too, famously outscoring his winger, one Prince Alexander Obolensky of Oxford University and England, while captaining the Co-Optimists to victory in the 1939 Murrayfield Sevens.

By now in his thirties, working as a busy GP in the newly created National Health Service, Innes had to curtail his rugby activities. He did enjoy the Barbarians’ Easter tours to South Wales, having marked his debut for that great touring institution with a hat-trick of tries against Penarth in 1946.

He also became a well-thought-of administrator, rising through the North and Midlands committee structure onto the Scottish Rugby Union, eventually becoming president in 1973-74. He continued to be a welcome visitor to Murrayfield into the professional era and his tenth decade.

He enjoyed a long and happy marriage to Peggy Erskine, who was also a doctor. She sadly died some years ago and he is survived by his daughter Helen, son Robert and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

During his years in general practice in Aberdeen’s Rubislaw Terrace, Innes was, from 1949 until his retirement in 1987, honorary medical officer at HM Prison Craiginches, and in this capacity he attended the final execution in Scotland, in 1963.

He was always a grammarian, having entered Aberdeen Grammar School as a five-year-old in 1923, emerging in 1935 as captain of Keith House, a prefect, captain of rugby, vice-captain of cricket and athletics and sports editor of the school magazine. His attachment to his old school was lifelong – he was president of the Former Pupils Club in 1991.

Innes captained every team he played for. He was a natural leader who lived a long and full life. Aberdeen has lost one of its finest sons. MATT VALLANCE