Wednesday 15 March 2017

Rally - Apology & Correction



Just after I had posted the pic of Murray Grierson and Roger Anderson 'winning' the 1988 Border Counties the other day, I received a missive from the far East (Mark in Edinburgh!) who took me to task, in the nicest possible way, over a factual inaccuracy in my caption (old age is a terrible affliction - but a wonderful excuse).

He informed me that his Dad, Mad Murr and Big Roger did NOT win the Border Counties that year, it was in fact none other than Colin McRae and Derek Ringer. This occasioned another trip to the loft to seek out the appropriate file. And of course, Mark was right. I had mis-read the computer printout. In  my defence, computer results were in their infancy in those days and I quite simply transposed the wrong columns from the dot-matrix print-out.

For the record, Colin won the rally in the RED Sierra from Dominic Frattaroli (in a Darrian!) and David Gillanders in the Metro. Murray and Roger actually finished 8th.

But perhaps of more importance was the fact that The Scots won the Barrel of Beer! In those days when rallies were fun and hosted after-rally parties, the organisers of the Border Counties presented a barrel of beer to the winning 'national' team. This was not a normal 'team competition' whereby members were nominated before the rally. This was a much more simple affair. Points were awarded to the top three Scottish crews home and the top three English crews and whoever had the most points won the beer. The only drawback was that the beer had to be drunk before the bar closed for the evening. Fortunately, the rally finished in Gala Rugby Football Club so they were used to hordes of thirsty, dust-streaked wretches descending en masse on the bar. And a fine time was had by all.

You couldn't get away with that nowadays in these more 'enlightened' politically correct times, eh? Perhaps this weekend's organisers could settle on a tray of pies? Just a thought!

The appropriate pics have now been selected and printed here. My sincere apologies.

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