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The former prop, one of 13 new addition’s to Scottish Rugby’s hall of fame last Thursday, made his debut in a 3-3 draw against England at London’s Twickenham Stadium 66 years ago. As the scoreline suggests, it was a hard-fought contest and evidence of that is still writ large on the 91-year-old’s face. Describing it as a legacy of his international bow, Rollo recalled: “In the second half of the game, I got a knock on my face and discovered I’d got a broken nose, so I had to go off to get the blood to stop running. “There were no reserves in those days, so once the blood had been stopped, I went back on the field and that was me – and my nose is still squint now.” His off-kilter conk adds character to the face of one Scotland’s oldest living ex-internationalists and he’s still a regular spectator at matches, remains an active supporter of rugby in general and former club Howe of Fife in particular. The nonagenarian was the Cupar club’s first player to be capped but far from the last, current scrum-half George Horne and his elder brother Peter, now an assistant coach for the national team, having amassed more than 80 caps between them to date. Rollo is one of the senior statesmen among a new cohort of legends to join the hall of fame, the others being men’s greats David Sole, Scott Hastings, Roy Laidlaw, Rob Wainwright, Mike Blair and the late Bill Maclagan. Also inducted were Scotland women’s players Lucy Millard and Sandra Colamartino, coaching pioneers Rob Moffat and Richie Dixon and referees Jim Fleming and Hollie Davidson. It’s elite company for Rollo, who might have taken to rugby late but soon made up for lost time. “I played a lot of football, and my late brother, he played a lot of football in his day for the junior club in Wormit, so it was in the family,” he said. “My father’s side were all curlers and I did a bit of curling too at the Lake of Menteith, so I did different sports.” The Fife farmer was 20 before he began playing rugby but whatever he may have missed out on in his youth, he more than compensated for over the next two decades, serving Scotland with distinction, touring South Africa with the British and Irish Lions in 1962 and playing on for Howe until the age of 40. Rollo, a former pupil of Cupar’s Bell Baxter High School, was a mainstay in dark blue for almost a decade, missed only two games for Scotland during his nine years’ service. His 40th and final appearance for the national side, against Ireland as a 34-year-old, equalled the then Scottish cap record held by fellow prop Hugh McLeod. “I don’t know how I managed that at all,” said Rollo. “The selectors must have been quite good to me.” He can also lay claim to membership of that elite group of Scotland players to have faced New Zealand and not ended up beaten. Going up against the All Blacks at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium in 1964, his team came away with a 0-0 draw, one of only two of 32 meeting not to have seen the Scots defeated, the other being a 25-all draw in 1983. That result 61 years ago also denied New Zealand a tour grand slam as they’d already beaten Ireland, Wales and England. “That was a big occasion, playing against the All Blacks,” acknowledged Rollo as he reeled off the names of his teammates that time round, including the likes of Jim Telfer, Ian Laughland and Peter Brown. “We had a good team at that time," he said. “We could take on anybody just about. Aye, it was a pretty tough fight, right enough.” Scotland play New Zealand again this Saturday, with kick-off at Murrayfield at 3.10pm, and Rollo will be there to witness this latest attempt to beat the All Blacks for the first time after 120 years of trying in vain – and no one will be happier than this son of the soil if his latest set of successors can go one better than the Scotland’s sides of 1964 and 1983.
