Enigma Variations

Farewell to a rugby great – Bruce Hay

October 1st, 2007

I was stunned to hear today of the death from a brain tumour of Bruce Hay, one of the finest rugby players I ever saw. Bruce was the Boroughmuir full back when I was in my last year at school and I saw him play many times for club and country. I can only remember two players who could consistently make a crowd audibly draw breath in awe by making a tackle – one was JPR Williams, the other was Bruce Hay.

When he first toured New Zealand with Scotland the Kiwis were very impressed. They said that there was no harder, more correct, or more fair tackler in their country, which must be about the biggest compliment they could pay anyone. He broke his arm in his first test against them, but gained revenge by scoring a try when they came to Murrayfield in a drawn match and again in his final international.

He was unlucky to be playing at the same time as Andy Irvine, and because of that he only won 23 Scotland caps. But he went on two Lions tours and played in three tests as well as captaining the side in a number of games. The press tended to unfairly contrast his hard-tackling defensive abilities with the brilliant but sometimes mercurial attacking talents of Irvine, but in fact he was very much an attacking full back as anyone at the attack-minded Boroughmuir club could tell you. He was part of the superb team which won the final unofficial club championship in 1973 and he won a Melrose sevens medal in 1976.

Solid as a rock under the high ball and a fine line kicker he was also a strong runner with a very useful break, and fast enough to handle the most celebrated of opposition winger, though on one occasion after he’d scored an interception try against Ireland, outrunning the covering Tony Ward while playing on the left wing, Jim Renwick quipped that it was like watching the live action and the slow motion replay at the same time! Hay laughed as much as anyone, because he was an honest-hearted and thoroughly likeable man who gave his all and was admired by everyone in the game.

He will be missed by everyone in Scottish rugby. But for anyone who saw him thundering into the tackle or surging into the three-quarter line at speed the memory will last long in the mind’s eye. A true legend.

Entry Filed under: sport