by R. H. Duguid

I played for 'Shire from season 1926-27 to 1931-32. Throughout that period we played at St. Machar ground on the left hand side of St. Machar Drive going downhill from Great Northern Road. The ground was a showyard with a stand, owned by the Northern Agricultural Society, leased to the Scottish Rugby Union and rented to 'Shire for a modest sum. North of Scotland and North/Midlands trials were played there and the Selectors believed that the sloping pitch called for an extra skill from the players catching a bouncing ball.

Our captain was George Stroud, who was selected to play for the North and Midlands against the Springboks at Pittodrie on Saturday 9th January, 1932. The score was held down to 0-9, 3 unconverted tries - one of the lowest of the tour. The opposing players were huge men who passed and received the ball with one hand. Stroud, no dwarf at any time, got the fright of his life but gave them all he had. There was an official dinner in the evening in the Douglas Hotel and a dance afterwards at the Palais. Stroud's fiancee was waiting patiently for him at the Palais when he turned up there with his hard shirt front covered with the autographs of the entire South African team. It was hardly a hero's welcome!

Times were difficult then and this helped rather than hindered us. No one had any money for drink, cigarettes or marriage. Only two players in the club drank at all and, if they had a bad game on a Saturday afternoon, the whole side descended on them for their habits. This was serious stuff! Our furthest fixtures were Elgin and Dundee, and those not too often, for everyone worked on Saturday forenoon and getting off to play rugby football was not automatic quite a concession. The kind of life we had to lead kept us fit and we trained one evening per week. On Saturday nights we drank coffee in the basement of the West End Cafe, Union Street (now Mitchell & Muil's).

The groundsman was Peter Simpson, a big, kindly, middle-aged man who taught me how to ease a sprained ankle by stepping from a cold bucket of water to a hot one alternately. The treatment also works for black eyes and must be applied by bathing the eye soon after injury.

In 1930-31 for the first time after World War 1 'Shire got into the final of the North and Midlands Cup against Dundee High School F.Ps., on a hot spring day. Their stand-off was a small, stuffy man named Norman Ireland. He was like solid rock to come up against and contributed much to our defeat by 15 points to 3. However, in the following season we won the Cup and again in 1934-35 and 1935-36.

Annual General Meetings could be stormy about the Committee's handling of affairs and I remember on one occasion Wallace Porter in the chair proposing a vote of no confidence in the Committee and calling for a seconder. That quelled the riot and the business proceeded.

I recall certain players but should recollect more - David Smith at full back had a safe pair of hands and a sure kick for touch - Norman Matheson a flying three and Jimmy Hay taking heavy punishment at scrum half. Tom Elder was a dashing wing forward. Other names from the past come flooding back to me - Joe Sutherland, J.A. MacGillivray, G. F. Falconer, lan Scott, D. Y. MacKenzie, J. M. Wildgoose, Wylie Cassie, Sandy Cooper, G. A. Paterson, J. G. Barnett and Arthur Fox. I had a real working partnership with Les Boyd as hooker and I his left hand prop, trundling the ball with my left foot on to his right for a sure heel, a movement now ruled out for the good of the game.

Those of you who have played in a well-drilled scrum will appreciate how the close physical contact of other bodies encourages one to push with the rest when required and constantly look at the ground for that ball. It is better that a scrum does the wrong thing as one man than the right thing at sixes and sevens. Many a point we gained under opposition posts by merely holding the ball in the scrum, while over zealous wing forwards ran offside into the trap, awarding us a penalty kick.

With the natural self-confidence of the North-East, we took on all comers, quickly measured up the individual players of the enemy and dealt with them as required. We feared no one great or small and from being the outcasts of Aberdeen rugby we climbed to the top as winners of the North of Scotland Cup. It was a great training school for the hard outside world and then it was hard.

There were half a dozen idle men at every street corner, through no fault of theirs, but a depressing sight for a young man. I had applied for hundreds of jobs in the newspapers and when I left for India at the end of 1932, the worst year of the Depression, I was happy to go. There I joined the Calcutta Football Club and played for another 12 years, two or three games a week in the wet season from July to September. That club presented the Calcutta Cup of melted down pure silver Indian rupees for annual competition between Scotland and England in 1879. The club celebrated its centenary in 1972, a year before the Scottish Rugby Union. The R.P.U. reciprocated in 1924 by presenting to the Calcutta Football Club a trophy known as the R.F.U. Cup, which was competed for annually in the All India Tournament held successively in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.

With the coming of air travel, this was extended and teams have competed from Rangoon, Singapore. Ceylon and Karachi, as well as many well known British military sides, such as the Leicesters, the Duke of Wellington's and the Welsh Regiment.