Ask Dundee community GP and Scotland rugby doctor James Robson what 33 years in the game has meant to him and he goes uncharacteristically quiet.
“The last game was in Ireland and, after the match, it was amazing. Princess Anne came in the dressing room to talk to me. That was a wonderful privilege.
“And then the boys gave me a retirement watch, a wonderful gift. So that was a special moment.
“But then post all of that, then everybody just went on their way. After we got back to Scotland, I got into my car, I couldn’t move.
“I just burst into tears, because all of a sudden, that was it. I was bereft. It took me about 15 minutes before I could get on the road.
“To everyone else it was the end of the Six Nations – to me it was the end of my international rugby career.”
More than eight months after that match in Dublin, James has now come to terms with his status as the now former longest-serving Scotland and British and Irish Lions rugby doctor.
But it would be a lie to say the 67-year-old MBE has stepped away from the sport that made his name completely.
Flanked by wife Christine, 60, and daughters Eleanor, 27, and Emma, 25, Scottish rugby fans last saw Dr Robson as recently as November carrying the match ball out onto the Murrayfield turf before Scotland defeated Australia.
Who is Dr James Robson?
Rugby fans will know him for his long years or service with the Scotland senior men’s and British and Irish Lions rugby sides.
He is as familiar to rugby watchers as some of the players and is the only team doctor to be inducted into Scottish rugby’s hall of fame
Born and brought up in Cumbria, he moved to Scotland as an 18-year-old to first study physiotherapy in Edinburgh, the only male in class of more than 30 female peers.
But once in the job – and after one ill-timed lecture from a junior doctor too many – he decided to study for his own degree in medicine.
That brought him to Dundee, where he met his wife Christine who was also a medical student in the city.
He lived first on the Perth Road, then in Liff and eventually Piperdam and today James is proud to call himself a Dundonian, showing real warmth towards his adopted hometown.
Community GP at Westgate Medical Practice
So how did the well-mannered family doctor from the city’s Westgate Medical Practice end up as arguably rugby’s best-known medical professional?
“I got a phone call from Donald Macleod, who, God rest his soul, has sadly passed away. Donald was the kind of godfather of sports medicine in the UK,” James remembers.
Macleod asked him if he was available to tour Canada with the Scotland side.
“And I was like, wow.”
James wrangled the time off from his own GP duties and the rest is history – 33 years with Scotland and six tours with the British and Irish Lions – an invite only rugby squad that tours only once every four years.
Rugby was an amateur sport when James began working with the Scotland side. That meant even the top players of the day had to balance the demands of their day jobs with their sporting commitments.
Fruity language in the consulting room
James, himself, spent more than a decade juggling the role of Dundee community GP with tending to some of the biggest, strongest and – shall we say – colourfully spoken competitors in Scottish sport.
Was it ever hard to keep the two, very-different worlds distinct?
“I was on my first Lions (British and Irish rugby team) tour to New Zealand in 1993. That was eight weeks away, “James tells me.
“Ian McGeechan, the coach, said ‘James, just a word of advice. You’re going to be in this environment for two months. When you go back, you’ve got to be really careful, because it’s totally alien’.
“He said it’s bit like being in the Army and then going on to civvy street.”
James returned from the New Zealand tour on the Saturday.
“I was at work Monday morning and the first patient is an elderly lady sitting in the waiting room. I’ll call her Mrs Smith. I say would you like to come in Mrs Smith, have a seat, how can I help you?
She said: ‘Oh there’s nothing wrong, Dr Robson, I thought I’d just come in and see how you got on during the tour.
And I went ‘oh for f**k’s sake Mrs Smith’.
“She never let me forget that. And bless her, she didn’t hold it against me. You know, she’d always start a consultation with Dr Robson – no swearing today.”
Life or death on the touchline
Life threatening injuries are rare in rugby, Dr Robson recalls, but he has seen his fair share.
Dr Robson was pitch side in Cardiff in 2010 when Scotland player Thom Evans broke his neck after colliding with Welsh player Lee Byrne.
It later emerged the Scotland star – who is now engaged to X Factor judge and Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger – was only millimetres from paralysis or even death.
Evans later credited James’ quick thinking for helping to save him. James himself is more modest, highlighting updated training on spinal injuries and the care Evans would go on to receive in the Welsh capital.
But it is clear injuries of such magnitude have left their mark on the Dundee medical man.
“The thing with all medics is that you do the job. Then you analyse it and ponder afterwards,” he explains.
“With Thom’s incident, I’d be driving down early morning towards Murrayfield from home and sometimes I would just actually well up with tears.
“You keep worrying – what if I’d not done that, or what if I’d done this? How might the outcome have been different.
“That’s the scary thing.”
James Robson: No such thing as a bad Scotland player
It’s fair to say the good times in the game have outweighed the bad, however.
Spend an hour in James’ warm company and it’s clear that his love for the game is only overshadowed by his affection for the wide range of characters who have played it at the highest level.
He mentions the relatively recently retired Tommy Seymour, Ryan Wilson, Jonny Gray, who is still playing, and – from the amateur era – the indomitable Irish hooker Keith Wood. James also knew the late, great MND campaigner and Scotland forward Doddie Weir well.
“I’ve never met a bad Scotland player, you know. There are some wonderful characters,” he says.
He is conscious, however, that his kind of commitment also carries a cost.
“I won’t forget just how it affects those people that you leave behind.
“My youngest daughter Emma’s birthday, God bless her, is in June. That was traditionally always a month that we were away.
“So I think by the time she got to 21 I’d only been present, including at the birth, for three of those birthdays.”
What’s next for James Robson?
And so to the future. Both of the Robson girls are fully grown and settled in their careers, James’ fatherly pride clear as he talks through their recent achievements.
James and Christine have just returned from a trip to Asia – Thailand and Cambodia – accompanying his wife as she returned to the site of her medical elective.
And while the first sudden shock of retirement has faded – and James now says he’s come to terms with the latest men’s Six Nations starting without him pitch side in February 2025 – he’s not done with the sport yet.
He helped pioneer precautions and treatments around concussion in his final few years with the SRU, helping the sport adapt to increasing awareness of the risks around brain injuries. That important work will continue.
And he will keep flying the flag for all sports, not just rugby, as the best pathway to fitness, health and, perhaps most importantly of all, fun.
“I don’t mind if people don’t play rugby. I’m very keen that we play sport, but all sports will have an inherent risk of injury.
“We’ve got to make all sport accessible. That’s a public health issue to mitigate against obesity, against cancer, against diabetes, against heart disease and against brain disease to a large extent.”
Conversation