Six Nations: Peter Walton tasked with finding Scotland's new recruits as he looks back fondly on international career

I catch Peter Walton just before he sets off on a five-hour drive, some of it through snow, to watch a game of rugby. It’s a varsity cup-tie, Newcastle 1sts versus Hartpury 2nds, and there’s a promising prop forward in the visiting team while their fly-half is “SQ” as well.

Peter Walton tries to identify players who can be recruited for Scotland.

SQ means Scotland-qualified. If you’ve got the talent and you’re eligible – maybe you were born elsewhere, grew up in another place but would love to make a Highland grandmother proud – then this man will get round to checking you out. And most likely he’ll arrive for your match having spent hundreds of miles listening to Jimmy Shand, the Alexander Brothers and Kenneth McKellar.

“I love this stuff,” says Walton in his kitchen in Malvern, Worcestershire, as he shows me the sleeve for his latest album download – Scottish Party Singalong: the Ultimate Collection. Among the 40 songs are “Loch Lomond”, “A Wee Deoch an’ Doris”, “These Are My Mountains” and “Donald, Where’s Your Troosers”.

Walton may not subject potential dark blue stars of tomorrow to Andy Stewart’s daft ditty but he might tell them about his own route to Murrayfield. He never had a granny in a tartan shawl with a china Scottie dog on the mantelpiece. He still speaks in the “why aye” accent of his native Northumberland. Yet he insists: “I’ve never thought of myself as anything other than Scottish.”

Scotland's Walton charges forward against France in the Five Nations match at the Stade de France in St Denis in 1999.

His is a stirring tale. “The players I meet and am hoping to interest in playing for Scotland can hopefully relate to it.” Faced with divided loyalties and a decision to make, they could be inspired by the back-row forward’s determination to play for his adopted land and what he achieved.

The last-ever Five Nations title. Twenty-four caps including appearances at two World Cups. And being part of Scotland’s 1990s dominance of Ireland, the most sustained success we’ve achieved against any country in the modern era.

Walton, 53, is a farmer’s son from Alnwick – “just five miles from being able to spit over the Scottish side of the border.” His two older brothers, Andrew and Michael, have followed in their father’s muddy footsteps. Walton worked as a livestock auctioneer before rugby went pro but had always wanted to continue the family tradition himself and says if he won the Lottery tomorrow he’d buy his own farm.

He was sent up to Edinburgh for his education and loved every minute of his seven years as a boarder at Merchiston Castle School – even the Scottish country dancing and especially the rugby. In the summer holidays, helping shift recalcitrant sheep and cows around at the foot of the Cheviots built up his strength, and he was already dreaming of running out for Scotland.

Walton is very close with former Scotland and Newcastle team-mate Gary Armstrong.

Merchiston organised outings to Murrayfield. “The schoolboys’ enclosure had terracing behind it in those days. Rubbish would be chucked at us because we were assumed to be posh – I certainly wasn’t – but the internationals were fantastic experiences. My ultimate hero back then was ‘Buck’ Shelford, the All Black. Who’d have thought six years later I’d be sat next to him in the changing-room at Northampton sharing a cigarette.”

By then, the dream seemed to have been dashed. “I hadn’t supported anyone else but Scotland and didn’t want to play for anyone else but Scotland. So I wrote to the SRU explaining that I’d been educated in Scotland, played the big bass drum with my fellow pupils in a pipe band at Edinburgh Castle and captained Scottish Schools. We never lost to our English equivalents, not even when I was jumping in the lineout against Martin Johnson in a mudbath at Hartlepool.

“But the letter back said I wasn’t qualified. I was picked for England Colts. They knew I felt Scottish and called me ‘Jock’. Then when I was at Northampton I was approached by the Scottish Exiles – the rules were pretty vague back then but they’d been changed to take into account schooling. I’d made the North of England district team by that stage. Fran Cotton was the manager and he asked me: ‘What does your heart say?’ ‘Scotland,’ I said. He said: ‘Then you’ve made your decision.’”

By a simple twist of fate, the dad-of-two’s debut would come against England at Murrayfield in 1994. “I was nervous in the build-up but my room-mate Doug Wyllie was great and helped calm me down. But then I was worried I’d have to call off. There was a training match and Dave McIvor stood on my big toe. I’d taken his place in the team but I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate. The toe was throbbing with blood but thankfully [coach] Dougie Morgan was a chiropodist and he was able to sort it out.”

Walton is tackles by Kieron Dawson during a Five Nations Championship clash against Ireland.

His wife Diana and parents Michael and Anne were in the crowd. Anne represented England at curling but had had to venture over the border, to Kelso, to find a rink. Here was her son travelling in the opposite direction to realise his ambition.

“The game passed in a blur. My instructions from [head coach] Jim Telfer were: ‘Concentrate on Victor Ubogu. You’re going to flatten him every time he carries from the lineout.’ I don’t know about flattening but I was able to stop him a few times, although attempting one tackle I injured Rob Wainwright. At least it was after Rob’s great try in that match. Jason Leonard was in their team, too. Northampton vs Harlequins, I’d seen him munching a fat burger just before kick-off and assumed he wasn’t playing, only for him to rumble onto the park. Ah, the last days of amateur!”

“After the match Gavin Hastings presented me with the match ball and I’ve still got it, along with every telegram [confirming selection]. These little things mean a lot to me. I looked up to guys like Jason and Martin and would ask myself: ‘How good am I?’ I never thought I deserved a place in the Scotland team, never expected one. Before the telegram there was a Monday night phonecall. The guys must have been told alphabetically because I would have to wait until gone half past ten. The feeling was always wonderful.”

Walton’s debut ended in agonising 15-14 defeat. “Rob Andrew’s sleeve! We were penalised for handling in a ruck but England wore blue cuffs that day. And, funnily enough, when they played Wales they had red ones. Rob and I are good mates – he recruited me for Newcastle Falcons – but I never let him forget that skulduggery!”

If Walton chose us with his emotions burbling, there was a practical element to the decision. “I thought the fast, open way Scotland played would suit my game. The likes of Fin [Calder] and JJ [John Jeffrey] were hard acts to follow but I hoped I could be an effective ball-carrier.” Telfer saw his potential. “He said: ‘You’re a bloody southern softie but we’re going to get the best out of you.’ He was tough but I loved playing for him. There’s a caring side to Jim that you might not know about.”

Flankers are outriders for their fly-halves; Walton’s throughout were Gary Armstrong and Gregor Townsend. “When we played England Gregor was only 20 but unafraid to be inventive and unfazed if something didn’t work. Now [as head coach] he’s got Scotland playing that way and they’re great to watch.”

Armstrong is one of Walton’s closest friends from rugby. “Before games he would punch me in the guts to get me ready.” They were team-mates at Newcastle and would travel up to Murrayfield together, along with Doddie Weir. “I knew Doddie from before rugby. There was a Borders party crowd, 21sts and the like, so his daftness dates from then. I remember a sombre day – Doddie, Gary, George Graham and myself coming back from Stirling and the funeral of Kevin McKenzie’s little one [the Scotland hooker’s son, born prematurely, died aged just six months]. The car was very quiet, as you’d expect. Then at Stow a policeman with a speed-gun jumped out of the woods. Doddie just wound down the window, big, fetching smile, and pointing to George said: ‘Terribly sorry, officer, but this fellow has just passed his driving test so he’s not yet fully conversant with the speedometer.’ The constable just shook his head and let us off with it.

“Now if I think about him, which I often do, I can see Doddie in the line-up for the anthem, sniggering away with Gary about some bloomin’ nonsense or other. These are memories I’m lucky to have.”

Walton’s second cap came in Dublin, a 6-6 draw in a contest spoiled by great gusts of wind. Scotland’s supremacy in this fixture would continue until 1999 and the final Fine Nations. The drawn game was Scotland’s only point that season. In other campaigns featuring Walton when Scotland collected the wooden spoon we could still put the Irish away. How come?

“We didn’t expect to beat them, the team still had to turn up, but we knew they weren’t better than us. Ireland have got their act together since, of course.” Scotland’s biggest points haul in the sequence came in 1997 in a 38-10 victory, tries for Weir, Townsend, Tony Stanger, Alan Tait and our man.

Walton had previously crossed the whitewash, two times, in the 1995 World Cup in South Africa – 87-0 against the Ivory Coast in our second-ever biggest win when although the opposition were modest, playing at altitude was challenging for, his words, a “big, fat guy”. His score against Ireland had a greater degree of difficulty but, snaffling from the base of the scrum, he bulldozed through the green-shirted rearguard. “Dave Humphreys later became my boss at Gloucester [where Walton was Head of Academy] and I never missed a chance to mention how I ran over the top of him. But I got knocked out in that game. Nowadays I would have been straight off the field for concussion checks but I kept playing. Rob Wainwright, Ian Smith and myself have a laugh about that now. The other two wanted to try a fancy back-row move but realised I was pretty much out of it: ‘Let’s just tell Walts to pick up and have a bloody go himself.’ When the final whistle went I thought it was only half-time.”

The current title is SQ Performance Player Transition Manager. He’s scouting the men’s and women’s games, here and right across Planet Rugby with a trip to South Africa planned for next year. He says his approach to the role is not dissimilar to when he was an auctioneer, a job now being done by his son Jack: “I talent ID players the same way I did sheep. I’m not a scientific person and don’t rely on tests; this is my way.”

In England Under-20s there are four who’re SQ and he’s confident at least two will eventually switch. Then there’s his old team-mate Kenny Logan’s 18-year-old son Reuben. “He could go England, Wales or Scotland. I’ll be tracking him and hopefully if he progresses he’ll choose us.”

Loving being back, Walton wants the best for the country which gave him his chance. “I’m pretty blunt when I speak to prospects. Do they want to play for Scotland? And if so, why? I want it to be for heritage, to make the family proud, rather because they think it’s an easier route to international rugby.

“Obviously that wasn’t me; I didn’t have that granny. I know there might be some players from my time who’ll think: ‘I could have got caps if he hadn’t turned up.’ All I can say is I loved having the opportunity to pull on that dark blue shirt. And when I did I’d like to think I gave as much as the guys who were born-and-bred.”