For the most part our series listing the 50 Greatest Scottish Rugby players received a warm welcome last week, but not from one former international player.

After the first day, no less, when only 10 names had been listed - those from places 41 to 50 so, by definition, those closest to missing out - he sent me the following terse message.

“It's when journalists who have never played the game compose a list like this you realise how little they actually know about the game.”

Naturally, since his status in the sport merited acknowledgement, I sent him a message back questioning whether he felt former internationalists were the only people entitled to an opinion in such matters and that led to a few more messages.

“Complete XXXXX,” he wrote a couple of days later.

“Sandy (Carmichael) who couldn't get a Lions test above Mouse (Ian McLauchlan). Bear (Iain Milne) above Jim Renwick. Jim Calder included. All *****.”

Then, subsequent to that, by way of apparently seeking to revise his position, he added: “Didn't say you had to be capped. But it was only by playing alongside these players you realise they’re a bit special. Doing little things that you'd never notice from the touchline. The game is changing so much that these talents are not needed. The bland leading the bland. Was glad to have played with and against lots of them. It would be good to ask someone outside of the Scottish Rugby fraternity who were their choices.”

Then, finally, after the last few names were unveiled, he took a full on swipe at some of those who considered to be icons of the sport.

“How many Lions Tests did Colin Deans play in? How many Lions Tests did John Rutherford play in at no 10? How many Lions tours did David Leslie go on? Shows your panel know F A about rugby and formed their opinions on media hype that had over inflated their ability.”

There is no need to risk embarrassing the sender by identifying him other than to say that his forthrightness is legendary and he would probably have no objection if I did.

He is also essentially someone who cares deeply about the game, albeit often misguidedly and in many ways the tone of his message cuts to what has been wrong with Scottish rugby in the calamitous 20 years since the sport went open.

This particular individual is also among the malcontents who simply would not accept that they had lost the argument in the early days of professionalism as to whether the emphasis should be placed on the districts or the clubs.

That the very same argument took place in Ireland and was resolved much more quickly with the rugby community getting behind the provinces, bringing about a transformation in their competitiveness at elite level as they overhauled Scotland, which had dominated them in the years immediately before professionalism, held no sway and they have continued, damagingly, to run down the Scottish professional game at every opportunity.

On the other side of the fence the first action taken by the SRU itself, whose senior officials were saying the sport would always be amateur right up until the summer of 1995 when all that changed, was to agree upon how it was going to pay its officials and, in their different manifestations, a great deal of their energy in the interim has been put into justifying the huge fees now extracted from the game by those administrators.

It has felt, at times, like a peculiarly Scottish dilemma, with intransigence generated by these groups of people who believe that their opinions are, for whatever reason, whether as ex-players, long-standing club men or salaried officials, the only ones that carry any weight.

At the risk of generating further ire, I would dare to suggest that perhaps those best placed to assess all of these things and to try to achieve some sort of balance are commentators who have no direct loyalties to former team-mates, no club affiliations and no need to justify taking money from the sport itself.

That said I did suggest to this particular correspondent that if he could find the 160-year-old(ish) bloke who had played alongside every player who has ever represented Scotland, I would immediately defer to that man’s judgement.

In the meantime, though, the response of friends, family, readers and colleagues has been very agreeable while, in the context of those other comments, the verdict offered by one Craig Chalmers seemed telling.

“Best player I ever played with,” he tweeted.

“Toughest and most competitive player I’ve ever seen.”

Since the player Chalmers was commenting on was his Grand Slam half-back partner and fellow Borderer Gary Armstrong, it could be suggested that he might be a tad biased in his assessment of our number one, however on the basis of the ‘played alongside him’ rule he apparently qualifies to have an opinion.

Then again, Chalmers was a back which, at the risk of giving a wee bit more away about the identity of our abuser, probably makes him part of another sub-sect of Scottish rugby whose opinions are less worthy than those of others.

In the meantime, enough of the bickering… here’s hoping the list has to be overhauled in a month or so.