Heard in the Scrum: ‘You don’t put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari’

Asked why he did not sport any tattoos on his body De Luca allegedly replied: “because you don’t put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari.” Hands up those who, like me, thought of the Edinburgh centre as more of a Rolls Royce among centres!

New Scotland winger Lee Jones is proving a bit of a sesquipedalianist. If you can’t be bothered reaching for the dictionary it means ‘user of big words’, as shown by Jones when introducing himself on “Twitter” as a “natural ectomorphy trying my best to make it as a mesomorph”. In other words, Lee has been trying to bulk up by adding a few pounds to his frame!

A NAGGING thought approaching the Six Nations has centred around Andy Robinson’s affection for Stoke City FC. During the Edinburgh-versus-Glasgow inter-city series, Robbo declared his hand based, he said, on the fact that the Potters were the first set of Subbuteo soccer model footballers he acquired as a youngster. Today, Stoke field a 6ft 7in beanpole in Peter Crouch – so how does the tabletop soccer game create his replica?

Allan JACOBSEN today becomes Scotland’s joint most-capped prop forward along with Tom Smith and one of the players he overtook along the way was David Hilton. Hilts may have pulled on the Test jersey for the last time in 2002 but earlier this season he attended a stag party north of the Border and turned out for a Watsonian XV at Linlithgow while telling old mates like Danny Moussa, who spent a season with him at Bristol, that as a Twickenham development officer, he gets a load of free kit ... which he often gives away as he prefers to wear his Scotland gear! You can take the man out of Scotland but . .

Chris PATERSON, even though he has now retired from Test rugby, was in typically self-effacing mood as he admitted nervousness about being asked to deliver the match ball this afternoon so that the crowd could show appreciation for his efforts. “I think this makes me the most experienced ball boy in rugby,” Paterson told BBC Five Live.

Had the deal gone through, former New Zealand flanker Chris Masoe could have been playing pro rugby in Scotland but, after a visit to Glasgow, he made his apologies and left, which was a pity. We would have enjoyed learning whether a comment attributed to Masoe when the All Blacks visited Egypt on their way to Europe was a one-off. It is part of rugby lore that when asked if he’d been to The Pyramids, Masoe supposedly replied: “I can’t remember which clubs we visited.”