Curtain call for a great Scott

In these days of a three-tier structure, the retirement of a rugby player can seem like a series of small deaths. First, you play your last game for the national side - in Hastings' case, although he did not know it at the time, as a replacement against England in 1997.

Then, you stop playing for the Edinburgh Reivers, or not playing as the case may be. Hastings ended his prol career after being frustrated by not getting to play regularly for the super team at a time when contracted players could not even turn out for their first team when available.

Finally, you stop playing for that first team. That's it. The end.

Stated so baldly, giving up on real rugby may seem like a wrench; a nightmare even. But Hastings has dedicated most of his life to the sport, and is simply adjusting his priorities rather than walking away from it entirely.

"Rugby was my hobby, it became my profession, now it's my hobby again," he explains. "I'd just like to wake up on Saturday mornings without having to rush off and play rugby. However, next season if it's a nice day it'll be good to know I can get on the phone and ask for a game with the thirds or fourths."

They'll find it hard to say no. He is, after all, the director of rugby with Watsonians, and has a depth of experience which few players today can match. Unlike some other former internationals, he has not been too quick to offer his views on the current Scotland side. When the man who was first capped against France in 1986 does venture an opinion, it is sympathetic to the current crop of players.

"International rugby was a new adventure, and I came through with a very special group of players," he recalls. "This season we haven't seen the top players playing to their best.

"The New Zealand tour will be important. Confidence in the squad is low, but there are glimmers of hope - Chris Paterson for example - and there has been a gradual improvement."

The All Blacks, as Hastings goes on to explain, have featured in some of the most memorable moments of his career -the highs including the tour which followed the 1990 Grand Slam, while numbered among the lows was the day three years later when he was selected out of position.

"That was one of the hardest calls, when I got picked to play for Scotland on the wing. That team was picked on a Saturday, a week before the Test.

"The thought was I'd be marking Va'aiga Tuigamala, but I wasn't, I was on the other wing. I was really quite worried about it, and I was right to be, because Jeff Wilson just skinned me.

"I felt naked, especially on the West Stand side, because there was no bloody stand there at the time. The world collapsed around me."

It had almost been turned upside down three years earlier, when Scotland came within an ace of beating New Zealand for the first time, only a controversial penalty award giving the All Blacks a narrow and undeserved win.

"It still grates that we lost the second Test 21-18 [because of] the dubious penalty that Grant Fox had. From a backs perspective we opened up the Blacks, and played outstanding rugby throughout the tour.

"The balance was right -hard work, good fun, and we enjoyed each other's company. It was a great, great tour which won the respect of the New Zealand public.

"New Zealand rugby has a special quality, and Scottish rugby does too. But every year the game moves on, and coaches and players will be part of a new strategy. We need more thinkers in the game."

"I've always been tagged as a strong tackler. To win the championship was good, and the Melrose Sevens was special, because I never thought I'd win one."

"When Gavin and myself won our 50th caps together, that was a special moment. Whilst I'd never call myself the greatest centre Scotland has ever had, I always gave 100 per cent.

"I thought it would be a bit more poignant at Myreside a couple of weeks ago," he admits of his last home appearance, which was possibly dampened by being the game in which Heriot's secured the league championship for the second successive season.

But then Hastings never was one for poignancy, or standing on ceremony, or taking himself too seriously. If we had not become aware of that over the 18 years in which he has graced senior Scottish rugby, his parting remark at the end of the interview would have made it obvious.

"Just don't make too much of it," he says of his impending retirement.

"No mate, just a couple of paragraphs," this reporter reassures him. But later, back in the office, it is decided to write just a little bit more.

Because he is, after all, still Scotland's record cap-holder. Because, so many hundreds of matches on from his league debut, his appetite for the game, and for life, is undiminished. Because one spring afternoon in the west of Edinburgh at the start of the last decade he chased after Rory Underwood and hauled the England winger down to stop a certain try. Because he's worth it.