Ex-Howe of Fife scrum-half George Horne named as one of two vice-captains for Scottish national rugby team’s game v Maori All Blacks on Saturday

​The 30-year-old, a former pupil of Cupar’s Bell Baxter High School, will share vice-skippering duties with blindside flanker Josh Bayliss and Stafford McDowall will be captain.

Horne, with 36 international appearances to his name, is the most-capped player in a starting line-up with just 132 caps between them and a bench only adding another 84, with George Turner’s 45 accounting for more than half that total.

Kick-off at Whangarei’s Semenoff Stadium is at 4.35am and it’s being broadcast live on Sky Sports for the benefit of early risers or anyone not yet in bed at that hour.

That’s the first match of this tour for head coach Gregor Townsend’s squad, with two more to follow – against Fiji in Suva on Saturday, July 12, and Samoa back in New Zealand, in Auckland, on Friday, July 18.

Veteran Glasgow Warriors No 9 Horne is one of three former Howe players in the Scots’ touring party, along with his No 8 teammate Matt Fagerson and Perpignan flanker Jamie Ritchie, but he’s the only one in a match-day squad featuring three new faces.

Joining Horne, Bayliss and 13-times-capped McDowall in this weekend’s starting XV are Ollie Smith, Harry Paterson, Rory Hutchinson, Arron Reed, Adam Hastings, Nathan McBeth, Patrick Harrison, Fin Richardson, Marshall Sykes, Cameron Henderson, Andy Onyeama-Christie and Ben Muncaster.

Turner’s fellow replacements are Alec Hepburn, Will Hurd, Max Williamson, Gregor Brown, Alexander Masibaka, Fergus Burke and Jamie Dobie.