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A Scrumful of Sporting Memories with former Scotland Captain, Henry Pyrgos

What a day the members at Musselburgh Sporting Memories had last week ahead of the crunch game between Ireland and Scotland. With our session being held at Musselburgh Rugby Club and it being World Cup time it seemed appropriate to invite a sporting legend from the game to share memories with us. 

Our guest was Henry Pyrgos, former Scotland captain, to chat about his 13 years spent at the highest levels of rugby union, including winning 29 international caps from his country between 2012 and 2019. During his career Henry played in the Rugby World Cups of 2015 and 2019, bringing his experiences of international tournaments to the session at Musselburgh. 

Henry’s professional rugby career began at Glasgow in 2010, and, after strong form for Glasgow, he made his Scotland debut in 2012 in a match against New Zealand. It was his first time facing the Haka and he remembered that as quite an experience. Previous to his senior debut, Pyrgos represented Scotland at Exiles and U-20 levels. 

He talked most candidly about the highs and lows of playing at top level and had brought along some fabulous memorabilia to share with members. We also learnt quite a bit about off-field Rugby etiquette including the sharing (or not) of jerseys and the awarding of actual caps. 

Our day was all the more special as we waved volunteer Rob Risien off to Paris for the Rugby World Cup match between Scotland and Ireland courtesy of sportsbreaks.com who have partnered with us to raise awareness of our work supporting older people as well as raise funds for us. We’ll bring you Rob’s adventures in Part two which will follow shortly. 

A Media Day all round 

With so much interest in the game Sporting Memories were invited to speak with local and national media about our day with Henry at Musselburgh. It was a breakfast start for CEO, Chris Wilkins, when he spoke to listeners across the country on BBC Radio Scotland. Chris spoke about the work that we do and you can catch him too on iPlayer here at 2hrs 55 mins in on https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r12y (a login is required) 

We were also delighted to have a visit from STV news who talked to Rob, Henry and one of our members, John Ross. You can listen in here at 15.09 mins. https://player.stv.tv/episode/4i87/stv-news-edinburgh (a login is required.)  

Finally, Henry spoke to talkSPORT just after our meeting and gave us a really superb shout out. This is the link if you want to listen in and he’s on at around 24 minutes. https://talksport.com/radio/listen-again/1696593600/