The region has been responsible for several major innovations, and a presence in the national game which is disproportionately large, because it is the one part of Scotland where rugby is the main sport and played by all classes.
This brand of rugby, imported from Yorkshire through the burgeoning woollen industry, was a world away from the refined old boy circuit of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
In small towns where there was little or no association football, clubs such as Gala, Hawick, Selkirk, Jed Forest, and Melrose, soon became the sporting focus for the hardy farming communities nearby.
It says much for the quality of play in the area that the towns from which the three most enduring club sides in Scotland hail from – Hawick, Galashiels and Melrose – have populations of 14,800, 12,300 and 1670 respectively.
The code was invented in 1883, when Melrose butcher and fly-half Ned Haig suggested a shortened version of the game, as a means of raising money at a local fair.
The idea was a resounding success, with Melrose beating Gala in extra time to win the competition, and soon most towns in the Borders staged their own annual sevens tournaments in April and May.
So seriously do Borderers take the game, that when in 1983, the victorious French donated their Melrose Sevens winners' medals to the local lasses as a token of affection, that there was an uproar in the town.
In 1995, with the advent of professionalism in Rugby union, the SRU decided to professionalise The South District team as the Border Reivers.
Their appearance was initially regarded with some suspicion and derision, yet it was due to the SRU's high debt that the axe fell on the Reivers just two years later.