New Scotland cap Shade Munro, the Glasgow High/ Kelvinside prop, talks
to Herald rugby writer BILL McMURTRIE about his battle back from serious
injury, and his intentions to follow in some family footsteps.
SHADE Munro was once so fed up with ill-fortune through injuries that
he threw his rugby boots in the bin. The Glasgow High/ Kelvinside lock,
however, picked them out from the rubbish the next morning and
persevered. The 27-year-old forward's reward is to follow his
grandfather into international rugby by winning his first cap for
Scotland against Wales at Cardiff on Saturday.
Munro's first cap has come more than three years late. He was heading
for an almost certain Test place on Scotland's 1990 venture to New
Zealand but, in a pre-tour match less than a month before departure, a
severe knee injury denied him that experience and removed him from rugby
for more than two years.
Such a cruel injury would have finished many another rugby career, but
Munro would not give up, even though the knee had to rebuilt. ''I'm
delighted just to be playing rugby, never mind at this level,'' he said
at Murrayfield yesterday after the announcement of Scotland's team.
Duncan Paterson, Scotland's team manager, was rich in his praise for
Munro's determination to persist in aspiring to international rugby.
''Everybody will surely be delighted with Shade's selection,''
Paterson suggested with no fear of contradiction. ''He's come back from
a horrific injury.''
1 Munro paid tribute to the encouragement he had from Jimmy Graham,
the Glasgow surgeon who performed the operation to repair the knee.
''Jimmy always said it was possible for me to win a cap,'' Munro
recalled. ''He said if I was playing at all, there was no reason why I
shouldn't go all the way.''
It was almost two years to the day after the accident that Munro
returned to GHK's first XV, playing as a replacement in an Alloa Brewery
Cup tie against Boroughmuir at Hughenden. He even had to pay to enter
the ground that evening, as it was only after his arrival that he was
told he was needed as stand-by.
In that match, however, he broke an ankle. ''I thought about packing
up after that,'' he recalled. ''I even put my boots in the bin. That's
true ... but I picked them out the next morning.''
Munro made his second comeback three months later, playing in the
Students World Cup in Italy, and since then he has steadily progressed
back up the line. He went on Scotland's South Pacific tour last summer,
though it was only in the final match against Western Samoa that he
played in any of the three non-Tests.
His one disappointment this past weekend was that his former lock
partner at Old Anniesland, Alan Watt, was not in the national team. He
is among four players dropped in the seven changes in personnel from
Scotland's team beaten 51-15 by New Zealand in November.
Munro has never been to Cardiff's National Stadium, but his
grandfather, later Lord Bannerman, played two internationals there.
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