scheme amounted to some £8,000, of which £6,000 was raised by the school through a huge fund-raising campaign to which Hamilton Academy FP (former pupils) Rugby Club and Hamilton Academy FP Society greatly contributed. The new Laigh Bent Playing Fields were opened in September 1948 by the Rt. Hon. Lord Hamilton of Dalzell, K.T. C.V.O. MC, Lord Lieutenant of Lanarkshire, 2nd Baron Hamilton of Dalzell. Hamilton Rugby Football Club (Hamilton RFC), founded in 1927 as Hamilton Academy FP (former pupil) Rugby Club, continues to play from the former Hamilton Academy's Laigh Bent playing fields. Among former pupils who pursued careers in sports, in whole or in part, have been Craig Brown CBE (footballer and football team manager), his brother Jock Brown (football club general manager and football commentator), Madge Carruthers (former manager, Scottish women's athletic team, Commonwealth Games), Ian Lang Livingstone CBE OBE (former football club chairman), Douglas McBain (Olympic footballer) and Ian McDougall (former 'American soccer' player and inductee, soccer 'Hall of Fame', U.S.A.) (Refer to their entries on List of former pupils of Hamilton Academy.) Clubs and societies Aligned to the curriculum or extracurricular, many clubs and associations operated in or from or in conjunction with the school, including cadets, scouts, guides, cubs and brownies; the Hamilton Academy Air Training Corps, the Hamilton Academy FP (Former Pupil) Society, the dramatics, photographic, scientific, music, film and literature clubs and societies. The standard of the school's debating society was high, and long after the Academy had ceased to exist this was alluded to in a House of Commons retort in 1997 to the Leader of the Opposition's (Tony Blair) rhetoric, when Peter Atkinson MP replied that if Mr. Blair "had been speaking at a debating society competition between Fettes (Mr. Blair's old school) and Hamilton Academy, I would have given him some points, but this is the House of Commons." The activities of the French, modelling, chess, golf, badminton, swimming, riding, tennis, hockey and stamp clubs were also listed in the in-school periodical, 'Acta'. Music In music, there were the Hamilton Academy Orchestra and various school choirs. From 1932 (apart from the years 1940–42) Hamilton Academy's mixed Choir presented an opera each year. In June 1946 over 80 members of Hamilton Academy's choir opened a week's performances of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance to a packed audience on the choir's first appearance on the stage of the Theatre