As the presidency of the Scottish Rugby Union has long been considered to be the sort of sinecure reserved for the pathologically worthy-but-dull, and certainly not a job for life's natural cage-rattlers, the past few years have seen an improbable cast of characters shoehorned into the presidential blazer and handed the gold-plated keys to the Murrayfield gin cabinet.
First, we had Andy Irvine, an establishment figure in some eyes but one who was still willing to man the barricades and play a significant part in the overthrow of the ruinous regime that was running the SRU in the early days of professionalism. Irvine then gave way to Ian McLauchlan, an individual whose standing in the Union a few years earlier actually plummeted to the point where they gave him a lifetime ban from the game for keeping the proceeds of his autobiography.
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