Ian McLauchlan: The Mighty Mouse of Scottish rugby with a 'heart bigger than his body'

Former Scotland and Lions great dies aged 83

Ian McLauchlan, who has died aged 83, was one of the hardest men and most inspiring leaders ever to play rugby for Scotland. He captained his country 19 times in his 43 appearances, but whether officially skipper or not, he was always in the front line –  literally, as a loosehead prop, but also metaphorically, as a competitor who never took a backward step.

At around 5ft 8in, he was on the small side even then for a front-row forward, and gave away a lot in weight to some opponents. But he never gave an inch in the scrum or in the loose, and, as a result, he earned the nickname Mighty Mouse after a popular cartoon character of the time. In other words, his standing in the game was in inverse proportion to his stature.

Born in 1942, he knew nothing of rugby during his early childhood in the Ayrshire village of Tarbolton, where, as he wrote much later in Mighty Mouse, his autobiography, “sport meant football, racing pigeons, whippets, pitch-and-toss and more football”. But once he took up the sport, at Ayr Academy aged 11, that was it.

Scottish prop forward Ian McLauchlan of the British Lions peparing for their summer tour of Australia in May, 1971, at the revolutionary pre-tour training camp at Eastbourne. (Photo by Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | Getty Images

“I was hooked straight away,” he continued. “I loved the physicality, the brutality and the camaraderie of it. Before long the game had become the be-all and end-all of my life.”

Although to the naked eye McLauchlan might not have cut a particularly imposing figure as he ambled across the pitch, in his lack of height and sheer indomitability he was the perfect choice to captain a small nation such as Scotland which often had to battle against apparently overwhelming odds. With the benefit of hindsight, then, it is odd that it took the national selectors so long to give him his debut.

He was almost 27 and playing for Jordanhill when the invitation came to join the Scotland squad. “The fact that I had to wait so long before winning my first cap against England in 1969 made the achievement all the more satisfying,” he wrote.

“Much of that day is a haze, but I remember sitting in the changing room at 2.50pm. ‘Open the doors’, I thought. ‘Let me get out there and at them’. I had waited all my life for that moment.”

Ian McLauchlan pictured at Murrayfield Stadium in 2017. | SNS Group / SRU

If that phrase ‘let me at them’ hints at an almost sadistic eagerness to dominate his opponents, at times he could also display a kind of masochistic glee as he played through the pain barrier. That attitude was most evident during the 1973 Five Nations Championship, when, playing just his second match as captain, McLauchlan had to leave the field early against Ireland with a suspected broken leg.

He seemed certain to miss the Triple Crown decider against England just three weeks later, but some semantic quibbling saw him retain his place. “It turned out my leg wasn't broken,” he said. “Although the bone was cracked.”

At the time Scotland's players and supporters alike may have been glad to see McLauchlan take to the field at Twickenham, and he showed extraordinary courage to do so. But in retrospect, his decision to soldier on was perhaps too risky.

As Andy Irvine, a Scotland and British & Irish Lions team-mate and also a former SRU president, wrote later: “They said that it was a cracked fibula –  but no matter how you dress it up it was a broken leg, and who can play rugby with a broken leg?

“I suppose it's a testament to the kind of guy he was –  how hard he was –  that he was able to make it through the match at all, and I can't even begin to imagine the pain he was in when he was scrummaging.”

Ian McLauchlan in action for Scotland against New Zealand at Murrayfield in 1978. | SNS Group 0141 221 3602

Speaking on the SRU website yesterday after the news broke of his former team-mate’s death on Friday, Irvine said: “He was some character and some player. He was smaller than most props he came up against, but I never saw anyone get the better of him.

“He was so tough, almost indestructible. What a fantastic career he had for Scotland, and the Lions. It’s very, very sad.”

Off the field, McLauchlan was blessed with a wry sense of humour, but there was no doubt that his on-field ferocity could strike fear into the opposition - and maybe into some spectators too. As his late team-mate Gordon Brown once quipped: “I always had a picture of McLauchlan on my mantelpiece to keep my kids back from the fire.”

However, perhaps the best summary of McLauchlan the player came some decades ago from another late colleague, his fellow-prop Sandy Carmichael, in a memorable seven-word phrase: “His heart is bigger than his body.”