Without doubt, after a challenging year for GROGS, the season ended on a magnificent high! When first asked to speak, Malcolm Offord was an enthusiastic Greenock Wanderers man with rugby in his blood and with excellent credentials. By the time he came to speak, he was Lord Offord of Garvel, an equally enthusiastic Greenock Wanderers man with rugby in his blood and with even more credentials and a thoroughly impressive CV. His professional life had been mainly in finance culminating in founding and chairing the Edinburgh based private equity company, Badenoch & Co. If you want something done ask a busy man and so he became a Trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, a Board member of the SRU and Chairman of London Scottish Rugby Club. In a thoroughly entertaining way he described his early rugby career at Greenock Academy, Greenock Wanderers (which raised a cheer from the small but enthusiastic contingent), Edinburgh University and then London Scottish. He was undoubtedly the only person present who had toured both Brazil and Argentina where he recalled London Scottish playing against a local club by the name of Belgrano! Seemingly without notes, Malcolm spoke knowledgeably about each aspect of his life and involvements making equally good use of facts, figures and humour by way of illustration. He is immensely proud of his involvement with London Scottish and is concerned about the challenge it faces in the English set-up even after such an illustrious history producing 4 British and Irish Lions captains and 224 players capped for Scotland, a world record for any one club. He did not, however, restrict himself to talking about rugby. He began with an explanation as to how he had arrived at his chosen title after discovering that both “Greenock” and “Ardgowan” were taken. He robustly defended the role of the House of Lords explaining that the institution “does not make law but makes law better” and explained that his new role as Parliamentary Under- Secretary for Scotland was to make the Government communicate better with Scotland, all very interesting to his knowledgeable audience. This was a tour de force presentation covering a range of topics not often aired at GROGS. The good Lord well deserved the presentation of a prized bottle of the Famous GROGS Whisky which he might share with his fellow Peers.
