Ex-Scotland rugby captain and Melrose hooker Frank Laidlaw dies at age of 84

The Hawick-born Melrose hooker was capped for his country 32 times between 1965 and 1971 and was also selected for two British and Irish Lions tours, of Australia, New Zealand and Canada in 1966 and New Zealand only in 1971, playing 28 games all together, including four tests.

He’s one of seven Melrose players to have been given a Lions call-up, along with Jim Telfer, Doddie Weir, Craig Chalmers, Finaly Calder, Peter Wright and Hamish Watson.

Christened Francis Andrew Linden Laidlaw, the former Melrose Grammar School pupil was born in September 1940.

A joiner by trade and later an agricultural products salesman, he made his debut for the town’s Greenyards rugby club as an 18-year-against Edinburgh City Police in 1958, going on to play for the club’s first XV 238 times.

Laidlaw helped Melrose to unofficial Scottish club championship and Border League title wins in 1963 and made his international debut two years later, taking over Scotland’s No 2 shirt from Gala’s Norman Bruce.

He also made ten appearances for the Barbarians, including a tour to South Africa in 1969.

Laidlaw took over from his Melrose teammate Telfer as Scottish skipper for the last match of 1970’s Five Nations championship, a 14-5 victory against England at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium, their first Calcutta Cup win since 1966, thanks to tries from late Gala fly-half and centre Jock Turner and Alastair Biggar and a conversion and two penalties from late Gala No 8 Peter Brown.

That was one of two outings as captain of his country.

Other Borders players in that year’s squad were Telfer, Hawick prop Norm Suddon, Gala scrum-half Duncan Paterson and Gala centre John Frame.

Prior to that, 1967’s 11-5 Five Nations win at home to Wales saw Laidlaw line up alongside three Melrose teammates – scrum-half Alex Hastie, fly-half David Chisholm and No 8 Telfer, with the last, now 85, scoring one of the Scots’ two tries, the other being touched down by Sandy Hinshelwood, with Stewart Wilson adding a conversion and Chisholm a drop-goal.

In his last year as an international, 1971, Laidlaw played for a combined Scotland-Ireland team in an English Rugby Football Union centenary match at London’s Twickenham Stadium and also for an RFU president’s XV against a Welsh XV in Cardiff.

He went on to spend nine years as a Melrose committee member, also coaching the club’s under-18 and senior XVs.

His funeral cortege will go past the Greenyards on Friday, April 11, at 2.45pm on its way to a private service at the nearby Borders Crematorium.