To get to play for Scotland at the highest level there used to be a fairly defined way of doing so, what is now called the pathway. Back then, and I’m talking way back in the amateur era, such a pathway was just for men and not women – the distaff side just didn’t play the game in those unequal days.
You played at your school, and preferably a fee-paying independent school with a big rugby background, who then pointed you in the direction of the club for which the schools were ‘feeders’ – the clue was in the FPs suffix. Or you turned up at your local club – it helped to have a male relative already in that club - and were talent-spotted.
If your local club happened to be a well-known one, you stayed there and learned the game. If it was just a community club, then you moved, or were moved, to a bigger club – no pro clubs back then, well not officially - before playing at District level and then a trial for the national team. Simples.
Take the 1984 Grand Slam winning squad, for example. All the players in that memorable season were products of the pathway as it then was. No players qualified through a grandparent, none an import qualifying on........