I KNEW Lex Govan virtually all our lives and played rugby with him for for many years. Rugby was a lifelong interest for Lex, who died last week aged 82.
Educated at Daniel Stewart's College, he played for the school 1st XV in seasons 1929/30 and 1930/31, being a member also of the cricket 1st XI in both those years.
On leaving school he joined the FP Rugby Club and played his first game for the 1st XV at the age of 17. He was a regular member of the team from 1933 to 1939 when he was elected captain and was one of the team who won the championship for the first time in the club's history in 1937-38.
After war service with the Royal Scots, he was again elected captain in 1946 and the club again won the championship, in a remarkable season when the team conceded only 21 points made up of one goal, one drop goal, three tries and one penalty goal.
Lex played for Scotland v The Rest in the final trial of 1934/35 and 12 years later, in 1946/47, he was reserve hooker for Scotland on a number of occasions as well as captaining the Edinburgh District side.
On retiring from the game as a player he served on the club committee and was president in 1956/57 and 1957/58 when the club again won the championship. Thereafter he served on the Edinburgh District committee until 1961, when he was elected as a District representative on the SRU.
In 1966 he became a special representative and was appointed chairman of the selection committee, also serving as a British Lions selector. Finally, in 1978, he was elected president of the Scottish Rugby Union - a fitting reward for his long service to the game.
In administration Lex was respected for his outspoken views, but to those who knew him well he was ``a kindly man''.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article