This month’s guest speaker was the well known sports writer, Alan Lorimer, best known as a rugby writer for most of the broadsheet papers in Scotland. Alan entertained his audience with a very well scripted walk down his own Memory Lane describing his start in journalism during his University years and the beginnings of his career as a rugby correspondent when he was an accredited member of the press corps on an international tour of Zimbabwe. While he was happy to name some of the tourists, including a young Craig Chalmers, Paul Burnell and George Graham, he also seemed very keen to describe the wild life he came across in the early days of that tour. Not many international matches can be delayed because there was a live snake on the pitch! Equally so, not many journalists can say that they met, and engaged in conversation, a head of state in a gents’ toilet (Ian Smith of UDI fame)! He has travelled the world reporting on rugby and has been on 14 international tours, a career he is so grateful for. Alan hasn’t only been a rugby journalist, he also played the game, notably with Aberdeen University when he was a teammate of former internationalist, Ian Robertson. He continued his own playing career up to veteran stage and still covers the sport as a journalist, with a particular interest in schools and youth rugby, making an articulate appeal for more support for the development of rugby through youth programmes and the state school system, which educates 95% of today’s youngsters but produces a fraction of the playing population. Alan likes open rugby and is not a fan of the game being dominated by huge forwards who, he quoted, account for around 80% of tries nowadays with their driving mauls and “5 metre zone” rugby. As food for thought he offered a couple of suggestions which had been unofficially summarily dismissed by ‘a high heid yin’ at the SRU. Nevertheless, from the tenor of the questions asked, there was clearly a level of support from some of the more grass roots rugby enthusiasts present. To warm him up on the way home to St. Boswell’s, Chairman Fergus Neil presented Alan with a bottle of GROGS whisky and the best wishes of an appreciative audience.