Pierre Schoeman

PIERRE SCHOEMAN, the hulking Edinburgh and Scotland prop, has never been to a Calcutta Cup match, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t have a heart-warming story about the grand old fixture. A recent one, too. It actually couldn’t be any more recent because it only dates back to the last meeting of the countries a year ago, to when the Scots ripped up the history books by winning at Twickenham for the first time in the lifetime of the players who pulled it off.

Schoeman hadn’t yet qualified to play for his adopted land at that point – that only happened in autumn 2021 when he made a try-scoring debut against Tonga before beating the Wallabies and losing to the Boks. His role in the great Calcutta Cup victory of 2021 was that of babysitter to WP Nel’s four children as his fellow South African was down south as part of the match-day squad.

“Yeah, it was really amazing