The feeling felt by many GROGS of having been let down by the late withdrawal of SRU Chief Executive, Mark Dodson, was more than compensated for when Henry Pyrgos, Glasgow Warriors and Scotland scrum half and captain gallantly stepped into the breach at even shorter notice. One regular “Luncher” was heard to say ‘heads we won, tails we definitely won’! Henry confessed that he wasn’t used to giving such talks but Chairman Gordon Wilson soon put him at ease with his own laid back introduction both to the proceedings and to Henry himself. Gordon bade welcome to the new caterers, Jacqui and her team, who, by consensus, excelled by producing very tasty …. and hot…. courses for the delectation of the 80 GROGs who had turned up for the first Lunch of 2016/17. Henry was modest in his presentation, outlining his introduction to rugby in his young days. His father, a Londoner and rugby coach at Bryanston school, encouraged Henry to try a multitude of other sports as well as rugby. Though Henry was born in Dorset, thankfully, for Scottish rugby, his mother is a Scot who made sure his pedigree was never forgotten. Describing his development through the Exile system before arriving at Glasgow Warriors in 2010, there were an awful lot of England references for a Scottish rugby captain. He was quickly forgiven when he waxed lyrical about his time at Warriors and with the Scotland squad specially praising the influence on his game of both Al Kellock and Gregor Townsend and their philosophy of “enjoyable rugby”. An obviously modest young man, Henry explained that his joint captaincy with Jonny Gray at Warriors works because it involves “2 guys without egos”. In spite of his self-confessed inexperience as a speaker, a measure of the interest he inspired was the number of questions asked of him, although a casual listener might have thought he had tuned into Gardeners’ World from the talk of different playing surfaces and pitches. This was rugby talk from the coal face! Henry received warm appreciation and a priceless bottle of GROGS whisky as a heartfelt thanks for saving the day.
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