Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In Rhoda’s 1962 Diary, my mother recalls Stuart playing rugby or rugger.

As far as I can remember, Stuart played rugby for Newton-le-Willows grammar school in Lancashire; that as the school he attended. I think Gavin was the only one of us other brothers who played rugby. He played for the under-13 team at Thurso High School, Wick, Caithness, Scotland. I had a newspaper clipping of Stuart on his rugby team, but I seem to have mislaid it. But at least I can include a poor quality newspaper clipping of Gavin with his rugby team. This was around 1970, eight years after my mother wrote her 1962 diary. 

Gavin and Stuart were the only brothers of us five brothers who were ‘well-built’. Bluntly, rugby is a ‘physical’ sport, so you need to be ‘rugged’ or fast in rugby—something that Sandy, Alistair and I weren’t! This situation is a fundamental law of physics regarding the kinetic energy of different masses. Or we might call this the “Irresistible Force Paradox,” that is, “when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force something’s gotta give.” 

The newspaper clip clearly shows that the long hair trend started by the hippie movement in the 1960s, had, by 1970, spread to the outer limits of British society. Wick is located in the extreme north of Scotland. My younger brother, Gavin, seems to be leading the ‘cultural rebels’; he is one of the boys with the longest hair in the picture.