Sandy's Sporting Memories are all the more valuable half a century after his Scotland debut

However, a bit more consideration invites a different conclusion. It is clear, as they discuss matters, that they are making a perfectly understandable connection between the science and methodology which predominates as a result of professionalism, with a loss of imagination and invention.

All right, it manifests itself in a bit too much glorification of the ugly side of the game, a near morbid interest in how Carmichael was invalided out of the 1971 Lions tour when he was a certainty to play in the Test team in New Zealand, or the notorious ’99 call’ which sparked all-in punch-ups on the 1974 "Invincibles" tour of South Africa. There is perhaps a bit too much pleasure taken from the off-field antics in bars and hotels which at times bordered on criminal behaviour, too. However, time and context makes these discussions funny rather than disturbing, not least because tales of damage done to buildings and property are pretty mild because of all else we know now about what went on in the seventies.

No, what these regular attendees are really lamenting is that the sport that they love has lost much of its lustre because of a general loss of freedom of expression.

As alluded to, they are talking with a man who has more reason than most to have a problem with the attitudes of those times because the assault on Carmichael in Canterbury which ended his involvement with the ’71 British & Irish Lions, in the same match that his propping colleague Ray McLoughlin’s tour also ended as the Kiwis resorted to desperate measures in attempting to neutralise their visitors’ scrummaging supremacy, remains a blot on the sport’s history.

His unwillingness to identify the culprit, while making it clear that he knows who it was, has frustrated countless interviewers down the years but, knowing better than to try to find out, my own assumption had always been that this Omerta was down to what could generously be considered dignity. Others might characterise it as honour among thieves, but instead, pressed by one of his interrogators, this expert in what were always referred to as rugby’s dark arts, offered a rather more interesting and, indeed, maliciously intelligent explanation for the continued intrigue regarding the punches which resulted in his fractured cheekbone.

“I think at the end of the day I don’t want it to be forgotten,” he said, demonstrating an awareness that in maintaining the mystery he has also kept curiosity in the incident alive.

“That’s the way I want it and that’s the way it will be.”

Yet as he says so there is no deep sense of grievance at play.

“I’ve got no bitterness at all that I didn’t get a Test,” notes this stalwart of the Lions’ greatest ever tours.

“I was honoured enough to be a Lion and I played 11 games out of the 22. Having to go home early was disappointing, missing the camaraderie. It’s still a good squad, though. We meet up and it’s just like we walked out the door and walked back in again.”

His reticence was, though, also in keeping with how things were done back then as further demonstrated by the fact that every member of his audience was amazed to hear that an Irish opponent who bit his ear during his first international appearance, was banned for the rest of that season. Such matters were not reported at the time.

Which brings us to the anniversary being marked this weekend because it was 50 years ago today, February 25, 1967, that Carmichael made his first appearance for Scotland.

He recounts just how surprising that was since it was the only time in an otherwise uninterrupted 40-match run in the Scotland side that his Scotland and Lions predecessor Dave Rollo missed a game through injury.

“I was coming down the stairs to go to the team talk, Charlie Drummond, the convener of selectors, was at the bottom of the stairs and he said ‘Sandy you’re in.’ That was it.”

In those days of replacements becoming surplus to requirements once the team entered the match-day dressing room, not even getting changed into match kit, he had trained with them half a dozen times, providing the opposition in the build-up to that match, the second of the 1967 Five Nations Championship and the tournament opener a couple of weeks earlier.

The memory is all the more poignant because it was the only time his father saw him play for Scotland. He had died of pancreatic cancer before Carmichael made his second appearance the following season.

Thereafter he was a regular for a decade until back trouble prompted his retirement immediately after he had become the first Scottish player to win 50 caps for his country, an achievement which earned him an MBE which, he points out only half-jokingly, the Scottish Rugby Union failed to mention when sending him an invitation to attend the Italy Test at the end of this Championship. Since he received it for services to rugby it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that the oversight be addressed in future.

He is looking forward to going to Murrayfield for the Italy game, though he points out that is more for the reunion than the rugby as he returns to his message that rugby was better when things were all a bit more off the cuff.

“I still enjoy it,” said Carmichael.

“It will be an occasion because we’ll meet a lot of old friends, so I’m quite looking forward to that.

“I don’t particularly like the game now, though, because the skill level is not as good as it was. It is improving, but I think there’s a long way to go to get back to the classical days. The game is not as open. We had great runners and guys who could beat a man.”

That perhaps explains why he believes Stuart Hogg is one of the Scots who will tour with the Lions this summer, although he cuts through some of the hubris surrounding the sport right now when he admits to reckoning there will be just one other . . . “One of the Gray brothers.”

That Hogg, who made his debut all of five years ago, became the latest to join the founder member in Scotland’s "Fifty Club" – there are 40 in all now – when the team met France a fortnight ago meanwhile speaks to how much more compressed everything has become, but Carmichael can also place that in a fascinating perspective.

In pointing out that he was named after his maternal grandfather he notes that the gentleman in question was a very famous sportsman in his own right.

“Alex Bennett,” he elaborates, also revealing what the B stands for in those initials that are so familiar to anyone who followed Scottish rugby in the sixties and seventies.

“He was a footballer who played for both Celtic and Rangers. He was playing for Celtic and he got married and moved to Cessnock so he moved to Rangers.”

Sandy said he has spoken about this family connection before but it was new to me. Either way, though, Bennett holds a special place in the history of Scottish sport as the first of what remains only three players – Maurice Johnston and Kenny Miller are the others – to have been capped out of both Glasgow clubs.

More to the point, Bennett made his Scotland debut in 1904 and his last appearance in 1913, an international footballing career that was longer than that of his grandson, played in only a little less than half Scotland’s matches in that period, yet ended up with a cap haul of just 11, which only serves to reinforce our understanding that there is absolutely no point in trying to compare sporting eras.

What we can do is revel in the company of those who have wonderful stories to tell and realise that as much as there is a bit of grumbling about how much better things were back in the day, there is always something to learn from them and the Sporting Memories ambassador will always make them very welcome.