MY old mucker the blessed Tam Shields, back in the day when he ran the Herald Diary, instituted many prestigious awards, not least Mason of the Month and non-Mason of the Month. Tam also used to occasionally dole-out his Nae Luck awards. Were he still McPepys, rather than having morphed into the Herald's Grumpy Old Git, Tam the Tim might well today be sending a Nae Luck award to London Irish's Steven Shingler.
Apparently, the dear boy is now officially "Welsh", since the Taffia family, having more clout with the IRB, has seen-off the Scotia Nostra's efforts to have the boy play in blue, rather than red.
As a firm adherent to the Sir Alex Ferguson ductum that we Scots are "The Master Race", well, poor wee Steven hasnae made the cut. Which is his loss. Mind you, with a maw frae Langholm, his qualifications were always suspect.
BACK to real rugby tomorrow, with the restart of the Premier campaign and part two - Premier A. In all honesty, the title is Melrose's to lose, but, back-to-back successes for the Greenyards Gany can not be taken as a given. There were a few shocks in the first stage of the campaign and hopefully, we will see even more of these in part two. I for one am looking forward to the resumption of hostilities.
Sadly, this season has seemed particularly fragmented and the SRU and the clubs simply have to sit down and come-up with a long-term plan which allows the clubs to know who they will be playing and when.
At club level, we now have a level of professionalism which was unimagineable when league rugby started - sadly, and I say this with due deference to the advances being made under the new regime at Murrayfield, the SRU is still some way off the pace in providing the slick, professional leadership the game needs in the 21st century. They are making-up for lost time, but have a wee bit still to go. That said, for all their faults, the SRU is still a much better governing body than their cousins across at Hampden, so we should be thankful for small mercies.
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AM I the only Scot enjoying the distress of our neigbours across the Solway in matters rugby. They had a poor World Cup, allegedly. That is to say, they didn't win it - terrible bad form of those New Zealanders, Frenchmen, Australians and Welshmen in not appreciating they were supposed to let the chaps in white win.
They have now, belatedly, come to their senses and chopped down some of the dead wood and their new-look squad could, if allowed to bed-in, give them a real chance in the next World Cup. I also like the cut of new coach Lancaster's jib.
In any sensible country, his new squad would be excused the early defeats, would be allowed to gel and mature and would be encouraged. Sadly, with England, the need to win and confirm that, the English do it best and God is an Englishman always intrudes, failure, no matter how glorious, is not allowed.
Which means, if, as I believe we can, we stuff them in the Six Nations opener, Mr Lancaster's hard job, suddenly becomes even harder. There again, given the way the political temperature has been hotting-up since the turn of the year; while things are unlikely to become as fraught as they did in 1990 - that opening game could require flak jackets and steel helmets in the press box
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