Bill McLaren's archives are donated to charity

More than 600 of the Scot's world famous handwritten big-match preparation charts were among the items handed over.

Bill McLaren Foundation spokesman John Thorburn said: "These archives span a half century of broadcasting by the Voice of Rugby.

"Everyone in the game globally knows about Bill's special and unique preparatory work prior to each commentary - but nobody imagined that Bill would religiously file documents for each and every match he covered with newspaper clippings and match programmes."

McLaren's daughter, Linda Lawson, has spent nine months cataloguing the items.

She said: "Dad spent around 40 hours preparing for each match and it was fascinating to look back to the early 1950s and see how he developed his big sheets to become sought after works of art.

"Many of the later charts contain as much as 1,000 pieces of information about teams, players and officials etc which were all colour coded.

"The first version of his big sheet was from 1956 when Scotland faced Ireland and the last was the Wales v Scotland game in 2002.

"We are delighted to hand them over to the Foundation and look forward to the good that will come from the commercialisation of these sheets.

"A small number were released during Dad's lifetime and we estimate around 500,000 was raised for good causes, mainly cancer related."

Foundation co-founder Brian Renwick said: "We are delighted to have the ability to reproduce copies of these sheets to generate funding for the development of rugby and provide other sporting opportunities for young people."

The archive items will be handed over to the Heritage Hub in Hawick for safe keeping and to be professionally collated and stored for future reference. As part of the fund raising effort the Foundation plans to release copies of certain big sheets for charitable events and public sale.