Tom Smith: The shy Scotland captain who did his talking on the pitch

Tom Smith was never one to run his mouth. Deeds rather than words were this hardy prop’s preferred method for inspiring others to follow where he furrowed.

But when he did speak, the respect was instantaneous. Former team-mates later recalled that when the famously-shy Scotland captain – who died on April 6, aged 50 – rose to his feet, a hush descended and everybody listened.

And for good reason given the height his deeds took him to. A member of Scotland’s last Five Nations-winning side of 1999 and a member of the successful British and Irish Lions squad which toppled then-world champions South Africa in 1997, Smith was a proper rugby player.

Although born in London, it was in the foothills of the Highlands that Scottish Rugby Hall of Fame inductee Smith received his education in the game.

After his English father died when he was just six, his Scottish mother later sent him to board at the Rannoch School in Perthshire – although Smith’s description of its location as being “absolutely the middle of nowhere” was probably just as accurate.

With the school’s pitches frozen solid for three months of the year, he and his class-mates would work on their fitness through winter by running up and down hills.

“There were times when it was pretty tough and cold out here but at the end of the day rugby is a hard game and you need to be tough to play it,” he said.

There were harsher lessons to come when he joined his first amateur side Dundee High School FP.

“You find out about survival the hard way,” said Smith in a 2009 interview. “When I joined my first senior club in Dundee, there was an old prop called Danny Herrington, a bit of a local legend, who basically shoved my head up my arse in training, twice a week every week for