Last January Mr Potter’s play The Scarf was performed for the first time (to great critical acclaim). Mr Potter and Dr Cherry along with a team of dedicated actors are performing it again next week, on Thursday and Friday evenings. Tickets are now on sale in the School Office.

I wrote about the Scarf in January – the post is below.

THE SCARF

Mr Potter’s play ‘The Scarf’ will be performed to an open audience in the school hall tonight. The play was inspired by former pupil and Hearts player Jimmy Boyd who died at the Battle of the Somme during World War One, and is about Duncan and Jimmy who follow the Hearts players’ example by joining up with McCrae’s Battalion and going off to the war.

Laura Cummings, writing in the Evening News, said this:

He was once an ordinary school pupil just like them – but his heroics during the First World War carved him a legacy the city still honours nearly 100 years after his death.

Former Hearts star Jimmy Boyd, who joined the famous McCrae’s Battalion, has become the inspiration for a play to be performed by pupils at his former secondary school.

The popular footballer was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 having famously become one of 13 Hearts players to volunteer for service under city soldier Sir George McCrae – prompting hundreds of fans and other men to do likewise.

McCrae’s Battalion was nicknamed after Sir George McCrae who led them. Thirteen Hearts players volunteered for service despite the fact they were leading the Scottish First Division (now SPL) at the time.

Five hundred of the club’s fans and hundreds of other local men followed suit, including players from Hibs, Raith Rovers and East Fife. Many, like Boyd and teammates Duncan Currie, Harry Wattie and Ernest Ellis, died in the Battle of the Somme.