10 David Bedell-Sivwright 
(1900-08) Cambridge University, West of Scotland, Edinburgh University
Honours: 22 Scotland caps, four Home Unions Championship wins, three Triple Crowns, four Calcutta Cup wins, two Lions tours (one Test, one series win)
What set him apart? A highly educated bruiser who, unacceptably by modern standards, was widely known as “Darkie”, he packed a phenomenal amount into a life which ended prematurely when he died aged 34 in perverse circumstances. While serving in Gallipoli during World War I he perished not when confronting the enemy but as a result of being poisoned by an insect bite. A ferocious forward who had just turned 19 when he made his Test debut in 1900, he remains the only Scot to have played in three Triple Crown-winning teams. He was also the only man to tour with both the 1903 and 1904 Lions, captaining them on the second tour and leading a 13-man team to victory in the first Test in Australia in 1904 after a 20-minute interruption to proceedings because he had led his team off the field in protest at the dismissal of one of his players. A bad leg injury prevented him from playing in the remaining Tests but the tone had been set and they won the series convincingly.

9 Ken Scotland 
(1957-65) Royal Signals, Heriot’s FP, 
Cambridge University, London Scottish, Leicester, Aberdeenshire
Honours: 27 Scotland caps, one Lions tour (five Tests, one series win)
What set him apart? Came into a Scotland team that had won just three of its 24 previous Test matches and his dashing style combined with that of longer-established winger Arthur Smith helped change the mood around Scottish rugby as they duly beat both France and Wales on his first two appearances. Scotland of Scotland may never have scored an international try and it remained a barren time for his country throughout the rest of his extraordinary, nomadic career – all of which makes it all the more significant that the man credited with inventing, or at the very least popularising attacking full-back play at the highest level, was so highly regarded by his peers. He also brought that extra dimension to the Lions on their tour of 1959 to Australia – where they won both Tests – and New Zealand, where they lost a hard-fought series 3-1.

8 Colin Deans 
(1978-87) Hawick
Honours: 52 Scotland caps, one Grand Slam, two Five Nations Championship wins, three Calcutta Cup wins, one Lions tour
What set him apart? When the national selectors were looking to blend the nucleus of the 1984 Grand Slam-winning team with the young bloods who would go on to spearhead a successful repeat performance in 1990 they turned to a hooker who had missed just three of the 42 Tests played since his debut. Technically superb in the set-piece, his pace and with a capacity to read the game which made him an auxiliary back, Deans played in a number of Scottish teams that achieved great things, winning at Twickenham for the first time in a dozen years in 1983 and winning a first Triple Crown for 46 years then a first Grand Slam for 59 years in 1984. He then took on the captaincy for another championship-winning campaign which included a record rout of England in 1986. His record in 13 matches was the best of any post-war Scottish captain and he ended his career after leading them at the first-ever World Cup during which he equalled the then record cap haul of Hawick clubmate Jim Renwick. 

7 Ian McLauchlan 

(1969-79) Jordanhill
Honours: 43 Scotland caps, one Five Nations Championship win, four Calcutta Cup wins, two Lions tours (eight Test appearances, two series wins)
What set him apart? “The Mighty Mouse” was a vicious competitor whose physical strength, fine technique (some of it legal) and tireless athleticism 
allowed him to turn the disadvantage of being one of the smallest props in the international game into a massive advantage. There were frustrations during his 
long stint as Scotland captain, 19 appearances in all through the seventies, as his side turned Murrayfield into a stronghold but, with many of the players who claimed what was only a third ever win at Twickenham in 1971 still involved, won just once away from home in the eight intervening years before he retired. Even so it was far from home that McLauchlan’s reputation was secured as the only Scot to start all eight Tests on the greatest ever back-to-back Lions tours when they claimed a first Test series win in New Zealand in 1971 then went unbeaten through South Africa in 1974. Perhaps the best demonstration of both his strength of personality and resolve, if not necessarily wisdom, came in 1973 when he refused to miss the Calcutta Cup match two weeks after having broken a bone in his leg against Ireland. 

6 Ian Smith 
(1924-33) Oxford University, Edinburgh University, London Scottish)
Honours: 33 Scotland caps, one Grand Slam, three Five Nations Championship wins, two Home Union Championship wins, six Calcutta Cup wins, one Lions tour (two Tests)
What set him apart? In the past 12 years Scotland have met England 13 times and scored nine tries. In the 10 seasons between 1924 and 1933, Ian Smith met England eight times and scored nine tries. The strike rate of “The Flying Scot” was quite breathtaking, a hat-trick on debut in a rout of Wales catapulting him on to that year’s Lions tour of South Africa while his haul of 24 tries in 33 internationals remains a Scottish record matched only by Tony Stanger, scorer of the 1990 Grand Slam-winning try. Clearly, with the brilliant Phil Macpherson at outside centre, it was a great time to be a Scotland winger since Smith’s 1925 Grand Slam team-mate Johnnie Wallace, an Australian import who was also part of the fabled Oxford three-quarter line, registered 11 tries in only nine appearances. However the real measure is that Smith’s championship try-scoring record – all 24 were scored in the tournament – was only recently matched by Brian O’Driscoll and even the magnificent Irish centre needed to make almost twice as many appearances to do so.

5 John Rutherford 
(1979-87) Selkirk

Honours: 43 Scotland caps, one Grand Slam, two Five Nations Championship wins, three Calcutta Cup wins, one Lions tour 
What set him apart? Scotland had lost all three matches in the 1983 Five Nations Championship when they headed to Twickenham, a ground at which only three Scottish wins had been registered in the 73 years since it opened. John Rutherford had missed all three. The return of his assured play-making for a Wooden Spoon decider and his contribution to what remains Scotland’s last win in England cannot be regarded as in any way coincidental. The most rounded Scottish stand-off in living memory was at his best over the ensuing year as the team embarked on a six-match unbeaten run which included a high-scoring draw with the All Blacks – one of only two times in 29 meetings that Scotland have avoided defeat by those opponents, then went on to win only the country’s second Grand Slam. His record-breaking half-back partnership with Roy Laidlaw was pivotal to Scottish success in the mid-eighties which also included a share of the championship with France two years later and his importance was such that his career ended when he played when he should not have because of the injury he was carrying at the inaugural World Cup in 1987. 

4 David Leslie 
(1975-85) Dundee HSFP, West of Scotland, Gala
Honours: 32 Scotland caps, one Grand Slam, three Calcutta Cup wins
What set him apart? When the Scotland players returned from the British & Irish Lions tour of 1983 they knew they had a chance of doing something special the following season because they had seen no-one from the supposed best of the other Home Unions who could match their countryman who had not made the trip. Leslie was selected as world player of the year by the influential Rugby World magazine for his performances in 1984 as Scotland duly claimed their first Triple Crown of the post-war years before carrying that momentum into the Grand Slam decider with a more fancied France side. No more intense individual can ever have worn a navy blue jersey, perhaps explaining why Jerome Galleon, the France scrum-half who was considered to be their driving force, took no further part in proceedings after what was described as a collision with his Scotland counterpart. So gifted that he was capped out of Dundee when his club was still a fourth-division side, Leslie’s place in these rankings is essentially dictated by the standing he has among the all-time greats who played alongside him.