Stuart Gourlay is a Cheltenham North legend. End of.

The one-time scrum-half was the king of the North back in the day when the Bishop’s Cleeve club reigned supreme in the Cheltenham and District Rugby Combination.

They collected Senior Cups for fun from the mid-80s through to the early 90s – and a fair few Junior Cups as well – and much of that was down to the drive, determination and leadership of the now 55-year-old Gourlay.

When he spoke to The Local Answer, the Justice League – a film about superheroes – was just hitting the big screens all around the county. And if ever there was a superhero at Cheltenham North, Gourlay was that man.

He had the skill, strength and force of personality to drag special performances out of himself and those standing shoulder to shoulder with him in the iconic black and red shirt, and had the respect of friend and foe alike in equal measure.

If a try needed to be scored, he’d get it; if a try-saving tackle needed to be made, he’d put his body on the line; if a call to arms was required, he’d make it.

In short he was the heartbeat of a team that punched massively above their weight for a decade or more in the 1980s – a decade which saw massive changes in a sport that began with Bill Beaumont as the face of English rugby and ended with Will Carling being the poster boy.

And yet if Gourlay had followed in his dad’s footsteps, it would have been the round ball rather than an oval ball that kept him occupied on Saturday afternoons and pretty much all of his spare time in between.

Dad Bill, who is now 85 and lives in the Reddings, was a footballer and a very good one at that. Born in Stoneyburn in West Lothian, he was an outfield player for one of the local clubs before he broke a leg – a fate that Stuart was to suffer in his late 20s.

When Gourlay senior recovered he found himself in goal but far from being a backwards step, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to him sporting-wise.

He was soon spotted by Cowdenbeath and it wasn’t long before he was the number one for the club known as the ‘Blue Brazil’.

“He’s very modest about his footballing achievements,” said Gourlay. “We were up in Scotland recently for a family do and we were driving past Hampden Park. He just turned round and said, ‘I’ve played there against Queen’s Park and Queen’s Park Strollers’.

“I was quite surprised because I never knew.”

But while Gourlay junior may not have been aware of everything that his dad used to get up to on a football field in the days when everything was still in black and white, important figures in the game at that time certainly were aware and it wasn’t long before he was heading south after securing a dream move to Manchester City.

“He was about 21 and was understudy to Bert Trautmann,” said Gourlay proudly. “I found this massive cup in a cupboard the other day and it was the Cheshire Cup which he won while he was at Manchester City. Bert Trautmann was the number one but he thought my dad was a good keeper and told him he could play in the final.”

Gourlay, encouraged by his eight-year-old football-loving son Nathaniel, has been finding out more and more about his dad’s football career in recent times.

“He left City and headed to Cheltenham Town in the 1950s,” said Gourlay. “There were about eight or nine Scots at the club at the time and he was on more money with Cheltenham. This would have been some time in the 1950s

“He played for Weymouth as well and I’m quite proud of my dad’s legacy.”

By now Bill had met his wife-to-be Regina and they will be celebrating their 60th anniversary in April. They were blessed with four children – Fiona, 59, who lives in Ecuador, Alistair, 57, Stuart and Robert, 53.

“We all had Scottish names,” laughed Cheltenham-born Gourlay, “and the three boys all played rugby for Cheltenham North.”

Gourlay’s love of all things rugby started at an early age.

“It was while I was at junior school at Rowanfield,” he said. “Mr Rees was one of our teachers. He was Welsh and loved his mini rugby. I remember we bolted posts onto the football posts.”

That was just the start for the young Gourlay and once he moved to Monkscroft School his rugby moved to another level.

“Bob Redwood, who played fly-half for Gloucester, was a teacher there,” said Gourlay. “He soon had me spin dive passing. I was always a scrum-half, even at junior school.”

But it wasn’t just rugby that the young Gourlay played in those formative years.

“I did everything, I played football, cricket and basketball as well. To be honest I was a better footballer than rugby player but I didn’t like the attitude of footballers. All that shirt pulling, shouting at the referee and niggly nastiness.”

So rugby it was.

“I used to eat and breathe rugby just like Nathaniel eats and breathes football now,” said Gourlay. “I’d be playing rugby four or five times a week.

“In my third year at Monkscroft – I’d be 12 or 13 – I got asked by Martin Brookes to go and play in a cup competition for Cheltenham North in Birmingham. I thought I was playing for Cheltenham!”

He wasn’t, of course, and by the age of 16 he was being invited up to the North by Andy Page and Stuart Phipps.

“It wasn’t until two years later that I realised it was the North and not Cheltenham that I’d played for when I was at Monkscroft,” laughed Gourlay.

His new club were certainly pleased that he threw in his lot with them, and it wasn’t difficult for the young Gourlay to settle at Stoke Road because not only did he have an obvious talent for the sport, he also had his older brother close by if he needed any support.

“Alistair was a full-back at the club and he was a good player,” said Gourlay. “He was well balanced and a bit more of a technician. Rob and I just liked to get stuck in!”

There was a bit more to Gourlay’s game than just being willing to get “stuck in” of course, and he was still a teenager when he played in his first Cheltenham Combination Senior Cup final, in the days when such games were pretty much the be-all and end-all of club rugby in and around the town.

“It was the last final that was played at the old Athletic Ground,” he recalled. “It was in 1981 against the Pats and we lost – I think it was 6-3. Cliffy Brookes was our captain and I played in the centre. I’d played in the centre against Stroud and had a big game and that’s why they picked me there.

“Bob Redwood said, ‘Why are you playing there?’ and said that we’d have won if I’d been at scrum-half.”

Gourlay would have to wait another four years for his first cup final win, but that winning feeling soon became a habit, as they won five finals in an era when Gas and The Prom Club were the hottest nightspots in town.

And while many 20-somethings from those days in Cheltenham have fond memories of those two late-night haunts, Gourlay, despite enjoying every minute of the North’s cup triumphs at the Prince of Wales Stadium, has fond memories of the old Athletic Ground.

“It was a privilege to play there,” he said. “It was a great stadium. It was great for Cheltenham because it was in the centre of town. It was a great pitch… it’s such a shame.”

He’s not the only person to say that of course, but it’s fair to say he left his mark on the ground even though he was just starting out on his senior rugby career.

So how would he describe himself as a rugby player?

“I was quite aggressive,” he said. “I loved getting stuck in, I needed that physical contact to get me switched on. Going into contact would always liven me up.

“I loved the adrenaline rush and I always had a massive amount of energy.

“Cup rugby was right up my street.”

That was particularly fortunate for Gourlay because pretty much all of his top level rugby was played before the introduction of leagues, so the end-of-season cup competitions carried so much more importance than they do today.

And as is appropriate for someone who was born on St Swithin’s Day, when the cup games did come round Gourlay loved nothing more than to rain on other teams’ parade… particularly if that team were their big rivals Old Patesians.

“I’d always play out of my skin against the Pats, we all did,” he said. “They’d always go into the games as the favourites and we’d be the underdogs, but at that time we beat them a lot. It must have been shocking for them.

“We had some real good players around that time – Rich Prewer, John Wood, Nick Townsend, John Joines, Cliffy Brookes, Andy Page, Alan Bunston, Brian Gossman, Lewis Dick, Martin Hyde, Lee Stanton, Jock Smith, Gary Joines.

“It was the Lower High Street versus the Posh Boys!

“We had a very good run and I enjoyed my time there, we were very successful.

“Cup rugby was hard and fast; my adrenaline would be going and the hackles would be up on the back of my neck.

“I loved performing in front of a crowd, I loved the atmosphere.”

And what about the rivalry with the Pats in those days?

“You can’t play rugby for fun,” he said. “There was no banter on the pitch but afterwards it was different. I get on brilliantly now with Paul Morris who was the Pats scrum-half in those days.”

Gourlay could have been forgiven for thinking that the trophies would keep on coming. But sport, as everyone knows, has a nasty habit of upsetting people when they least expect it.

They’d won four successive cups and were eyeing a fifth when Pats headed to Stoke Road for a semi-final in the spring of 1989.

The game was typically hard-fought, the North had edged ahead but then it all went horribly wrong for the home club when their talisman suffered a very badly broken leg.

“Yes, it was a bad break. I remember being in hospital and asking who had won the game and being told that Pats had, so it was a double whammy,” recalls Gourlay, who also remembers that among the many visitors who went to see him in hospital was his long-time rival Paul Morris.

“I was at my peak, 28 or 29. I had to have the leg rebroken three years later.

“The injury knocked the stuffing out of me. I had a lot of muscle wastage and I’d think, ‘Why me?’”

What made the injury even tougher to take was that Gourlay was preparing to take up an offer to train with Bath 2nds in the summer.

“I’d bulked up and put on about a stone in weight,” he said. “I was going to go down there and when I broke my leg I remember thinking, ‘That’s it’.”

Gourlay was never the same player again although his love of all things rugby ensured that he still played as often as he could.

“I suppose I was able to play 70 to 80 per cent of how I used to play although the leg never worried me,” he said.

“I remember playing against Stow and flying into a ruck at 100mph. One of their players shouted, ‘Watch his leg’. I suppose he was just showing concern but I just told him to shut up!”

Gourlay may not have been able to reach the heights of his pre-injury years but he still forced his way back into North’s 1st XV, playing a dozen or so league games when his brother Rob, a hooker, was captain.

“I scored a couple of tries,” he added.

He continued playing regularly for the 2nds and 3rds until his early 40s – despite a couple more operations on his leg – and still plays the occasional game for the club’s vets today.

But if he thought life couldn’t get tougher after he broke his leg, Gourlay found out about eight years ago that it could. And again, as so often seems to happen, it came at a time when he was the happiest he’d ever been.

“I was diagnosed with cancer,” he said. “I’d just got married to Jodie and Nathaniel was six months old. When I was told I’d got cancer my life just kind of stopped.

“I distanced myself from everything. I lost more than three stone and went down to under 10 stone.

“I had cancer of the tongue and I lost 11 teeth. They were feeding me through a tube.

“I didn’t have any pain from the cancer, it was the treatment – the radiotherapy and chemotherapy. It burned you inside and outside and I was very, very low.

“I got diagnosed in the March and my son’s first birthday just passed me by.”

And typically of Gourlay, who is one of life’s good guys, it wasn’t just himself he was thinking about during those dark times.

“I felt so bad because Jodie’s first husband had died of cancer,” he said. “I felt guilty because I was putting her through it all again.”

Fortunately this is one story with a very happy ending.

“By the Christmas I was in recovery,” said Gourlay, “and I remember cooking Christmas lunch for 17 of us.

“I was given the all clear nearly three years ago – the survival rate is fantastic, much greater than you think it is.”

Gourlay and Jodie – “We got married when I was 47, I was a bit of a late starter! She was 29 but she’s 37 now!” laughed Gourlay – live in Newent with Nathaniel and 15-year-old Leah, to whom Gourlay is a very proud stepdad.

They met at a salsa class and Gourlay chuckled: “I liked salsa and then I became a salsa teacher. Mind you, I kept that a bit quiet at the North!”

Gourlay doesn’t get down to the North too often these days but still has many fond memories of his time at the club.

“It was a proper rugby club and I was taken in by it,” he said. “There was never a dull moment.

“I remember that last game at the Athletic Ground, I think we took the posts and had them at the North for years.

“Then there was the time we had this lad playing for our 3rds – I think Ronnie Freebury got him to play. A few weeks later he was on the wing for Ireland!”

Rugby in the 80s wasn’t as organised as it is today. If you were captain of a grassroots club you were also the coach as well.

So does Gourlay think he could have played at a higher level?

“To be honest I always knew I had an ability,” he said. “Sometimes it was quite easy to score. I don’t want to sound arrogant because very often it was served up to me on a platter because we had such a good pack.

“I had a chance to train at Gloucester and Cheltenham were always asking me to come and play for them.

“But I was loyal and I had my mates.

“We got to play at places we shouldn’t have and beat clubs who we should not have beaten.

“Perhaps I should have been a bit more ruthless. Lewis Dick told me I could have played at a higher level but I wasn’t big-headed and I thought for a long time that maybe I wasn’t good enough.

“I probably needed someone to tell me when I was younger how good I was.”

It wasn’t only in rugby union that Gourlay stood out, he also had a brief and impressive period in rugby league.

“I was playing rugby for the YMCA and Cheltenham Technical College as well as the North,” recalls Gourlay. “I also played for Cheltenham’s amateur rugby league team.

“I got invited down to London Broncos for trial games and played under a pseudonym because of the rugby politics at the time.

“I was quite interested because in those days there was a bit of money involved but it kind of fizzled out.”

These days the big thing that Gourlay is interested in is his family and he gets lots of enjoyment from watching Nathaniel playing football for Redmarley.

And he’s pretty good too, scoring goals at such a rate that his dad sometimes has difficulty keeping count.

It’s almost come full circle of course because Nathaniel’s grandad was a big football man.

And dad is enjoying the football too even though rugby is still his first love.

“I still get a tingle down my spine on the morning of a big rugby match if it’s a Six Nations game or something like that,” he said.

“But really it’s Nathaniel’s turn now.”

Good dad, good rugby player, good bloke.