Former Scotland age-grade cap Craig Marshall has announced his retirement from rugby and has been looking back at memories of winning the Scottish Cup with Boroughmuir and playing against current Ireland cap Sean O’Brien.
The 29-year-old first started playing at the age of seven in the Boroughmuir mini rugby section in Edinburgh.
He said: “I played all of my youth rugby at Boroughmuir, progressing from the P4 team all the way up to the under-18s.
“In addition I played at Boroughmuir High School, making my first XV debut at the age of 14.
“I owe a lot to the various youth coaches at Boroughmuir minis who put in a huge number of hours to help us progress as young players, as well as the support offered by George Watson and Ian Thom at the school.
My youth rugby culminated in being selected for the Scotland under-18 team for two years.”
At that stage Craig, who would go on and play at centre and full-back, was a stand-off while he was also a talented cricketer coming through at Carlton.
“It was a little easier balancing the two sports when I was younger, but once I was selected for the Scotland under-18s and graduated into senior rugby it became impossible to put the required time and effort into both,” he explained.
“I played cricket with Carlton, progressing through the youth teams and playing for the senior first XI from the age of 14 through to 18, before the rugby commitments took over.
“Highlights included winning the Masterton Trophy and reaching the Scottish Cup final while I played cricket for Scotland under-15s and under-17s. I am likely to go back to playing cricket this summer.
“In terms of the start of my senior rugby career, I played for two years at Boroughmuir, but struggled to gain consistent first-team game time so moved to Stewart’s Melville.
“The late Grant MacKenzie was the major factor behind that move for me. He was an unbelievable guy and had a huge impact on so many young players at Stewart’s Melville.”
Marshall helped Stewart’s Melville gain promotion to the top flight in his time there and then had a three-year spell in Canada.
“There I played for Toronto Scottish and the Ontario provincial team, winning two Canadian national championships with Ontario,” he said.
“A particular highlight was a tour with Ontario to South America which included a win over the Uruguay national team.
“I then came back to play for Boroughmuir and without doubt the highlight of my second stint at Meggetland was winning the Scottish Cup in 2015 against Hawick at Murrayfield. Winning with your mates at the club you have grown up at is difficult to beat.
“Over the years I have been lucky enough to play with and against a number of top-quality players. I played with Ross Rennie, who went on to earn Scotland caps, while Carl Bezuidenhout is a quality stand-off.
“When I was playing for Scotland at under-18 level we played against Ireland and Sean O’Brien was in that side.”
Marshall, who away from the rugby field is a project manager with architecture and design company Space Solutions, has decided to stop playing after picking up a number of concussions.
“Unfortunately, I kept getting concussed during pre-season last summer – three in a fairly short space of time,” he stated.
“The medical staff at Boroughmuir were excellent with me and always put my personal wellbeing ahead of any other factors. It is the right time to stop playing and although I will miss the game I have made some great friends over the years.”
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 here